Hardknott & Wrynose driving road map

by Sidney van den Boogaard

Narrow, steep and utterly unforgiving, these are the Lake District's most notorious passes. From Little Langdale you climb Wrynose Pass, where the Three Shire Stone marks the spot where Cumberland, Westmorland and Lancashire once met. After dropping into the Duddon valley comes Hardknott, with gradients of up to 1 in 3, steep enough to share the title of England's steepest road. It is single-track most of the way, and uphill traffic has priority. On the way down to Eskdale you pass the remains of a second-century Roman fort. For the garage wall of anyone who isn't afraid of first gear.

This work is part of the Petrolhead Roads collection: the world's finest driving and riding roads, from coastal routes and mountain roads to legendary ribbons of curves. Each road is drawn from the real route and finished in the same calm, graphic style, with the elevation profile and, along the bottom, the length, the road number and the facts that made the road famous.

The road is drawn from OpenStreetMap data (© OpenStreetMap contributors) and the profile from Copernicus elevation data. A great gift for anyone who would rather drive a great road than the motorway.