Repair and maintenance of Breast High Road – ‘Borrowdale’ and ‘Bretherdale’ LDNPA Projects

You are invited to submit a proposal for the ‘Repair and maintenance of Breast High Road ‘Borrowdale’ and ‘Bretherdale’ Projects’.

This is subject to successful funding by Electricity North West via the Landscape Enhancement Initiative funding. We have submitted an Expression of Interest and will submit a 2nd stage application process in May 2020. We will find out the success of our application in Autumn 2020 and the project will start, subject to funding, in Spring 2021.

This invitation is issued subject to successful funding being received and under the provisions of the LDNPA’s Contract Standing Orders for the provision of services.
Breast High Road is a Byway Open to All Traffic and Unclassified County Road within the Parishes of Whinfell, Tebay and Orton within the Lake District National Park. The route crosses mainly open fell land and is unsealed for most of its length, climbing steeply to 430m from either direction. It is a significant landscape feature visible from the A6 (Kendal to Shap). Approximately 3km in length its surface consists of bedrock, large loose stones, hard packed stony track and broken tarmac.

Historically the route has been used as a link road between Kendal, Tebay and Orton linking the two market towns but is now used as a ‘green lane’ (an unsealed rural road) for recreational leisure activities including walking, biking and recreational driving/motorcycling. It is recognised as an important Byway linking the Yorkshire Dales National Park and the Lake District National Park and is also part of the ‘Trans Euro Trail’ which uses green lanes to traverse 38,000km of trails around Europe. The route is one of the few routes in the national park that provides legal off road driving for recreational driving and motorcycling, with these routes forming less than 4% of the total Rights of Way Network in the national park.

The route has over a number of years suffered significant deterioration, due to the exposed nature, visitor pressure and significant flood events in the area. This has caused damage to the route including:

• blocked drainage gullies and culverts,
• exposed, broken concrete drains, where the surrounding road surface has washed away.
• displaced and unstable stone on steeper sections.
• the lane surface has sunken to below the surrounding hillsides, forming channels for water to run down.
• Erosion of surrounding landscape.

As a consequence of its condition, users are now deviating from the route itself, causing further damage to the fragile landscape surrounding the road.

We are proposing a number of maintenance and repair works to the route to create a sustainable route enjoyable for all users.

The route has been divided into two sections for funding purposes. These are referred to as

1. ‘Borrowdale’ running from the junction with the A6 at GR NY 553,035 and the fell wall at GR NY 566,043, and
2. ‘Bretherdale’ running from the fell wall at GR NY 566,043 to the entrance onto the common from Bretherdale at GR NY 575,048.