About the West Highland Way

The West Highland Way covers much of its distance on Drovers Roads. Here is a bit of the history of these roads.

Drovers Roads

Drovers were responsible for the long distance driving of animals on the hoof to market in England. They accompanied their livestock either on foot or on horseback, traveling substantial distances. Rural England, Wales and Scotland are crossed by numerous drove roads that were used for this trade, many of which are now no more than tracks, and some lost altogether. The word "drovers" seems to be used for those engaged in long distance trade--distances which could cover much of the length of Britain--while "drivers" was used for those taking cattle to local markets.

It is not known for certain when the trade began. "Drove" as a place name can be traced to the early 1200s, and there are records of cattle driven from Wales to London and sheep from Lincolnshire to York in the early 1300s. Drovers from Scotland were licensed in 1359 to drive stock through England. These may be simply the earliest records of a more ancient trade. There is increasing evidence for large-scale cattle rearing in Bronze Age and Iron Age Britain. Cattle and sheep were part of the Romano-British economy. By the Anglo-Saxon period there was long distance movement of cattle, including stolen stock.

The task of controlling herds of three or four hundred animals on narrow droves, keeping them healthy, and feeding them en route over several weeks required expertise and authority. There was licensing under the legislation intended to control, although it seems to have been less rigorously applied to drovers. They were also exempted from the Disarming Acts of 1716 and 1748, which were passed after Jacobite uprisings. They were not necessarily literate but were respected as experts in their trade. The regularity of the Welsh trade across Wiltshire is proved by an inscription in Welsh on a cottage at Stockbridge, still visible in the twentieth century; "Satisfactory hay, sweet pasture, good ale and a comfortable bed".

Droving declined during the nineteenth century, through a combination of agricultural change, rail transport, cattle disease and more intensive use of the countryside through which the stock had passed for hundreds of years.

So that is how the drovers roads came to be, good for us in Scotland and along the West Highland Way.

It could never has crossed the mind of a drover that some day people would set out to walk these same paths for pleasure. The concept of free time and holidays was still far in the future.