Chance to walk in history's footsteps, thanks to new website

Published on Monday 11 May 2009 22:11

THEY are well-worn routes, steeped in history, that were used for taking coffins to burial grounds, driving cattle to market or even smuggling whisky.

Now, in an attempt to help people learn about the past and encourage walkers to make use of the historic network of paths across Scotland, a website has been created to highlight their location and to reveal their history.

The paths included on the website, created by the Scottish Rights of Way and Access Society (ScotWays), include pilgrimage routes, drove roads and peat-cutting paths.

There are coffin roads that took the dead to be buried in consecrated ground, Roman roads built nearly 2,000 years ago, and the drove roads that saw hundreds of thousands of cows walked from all parts of Scotland to descend on the big cattle trysts at Crieff and Falkirk.

The website also includes smuggling routes, such as the appropriately named Thief's Road in Berwickshire. It would have been frequented by cattle thieves, or reivers as they were known.

Then there are trade routes, such as the Herring Road, which begins in Dunbar and was used in the 18th and 19th centuries by people taking home a stock of salted herring for winter use, and also by fishwives carrying huge creels of the fish to markets in Lauder.

ScotWays chairman George Menzies said: "ScotWays has been protecting and promoting paths for over 150 years and we are delighted to be able to pass on our knowledge of the paths' histories in such an accessible way."

The website includes a search facility that takes users to a historical description, as well as maps, photos, details about the conditions of the route and whether it is suitable for bikes, horses and mobility scooters.

It is the first project of its kind in Scotland and was funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund and Scottish Natural Heritage (SNH).

The paths range from the accessible to the challenging. All give a new insight into their purpose and to methods of travel before the car.

SNH chief executive Ian Jardine said he hoped the website would encourage more people to go out and explore the natural heritage around them.

"Using Scotland's path networks offers physical, emotional and cultural benefits to people of all ages and abilities," he said.

The latest Google Maps technology is used on the website along with historic Bartholomew maps.

This enables detail from the old maps to be overlaid with the modern road network.

Neil Ramsay, the heritage paths project officer, is keen to keep adding to the project.

He said: "Ideally, the resource should continue to grow and expand as people use it and contribute their own local knowledge and information about the old paths in their areas.

"There are also aspects of paths' history that are undocumented and we'd like users to see the website as a dynamic resource that can be added to."