LIMESTONE COUNTRY - A Northern Coast to Coast Walk: From St Bees to Robin Hood's Bay - page 51

Distance 12.6km (7.9 miles)

Height Gain 107m (351 feet)

SHAP

Since 1970, when the M6 motorway opened, Shap has been spared the aggravation of
the traffic that used to shake its very foundations. Not everyone applauded the stroke
of highway-engineering genius that brought peace and quiet to this straggling village
high on the moorland fringe of the Lake District, for as tranquility set in, many jobs and
livelihoods were lost. Once prosperous shops, hotels, cafés, garages and other sundry
services faced an immediate decline in trade, as everyone now bypassed the village,
renowned for snow-blocked winter roads that often ensnared travellers.
Shops, cafés, hotels and boarding houses still remain, however, to resupply Coast-
to-Coasters, but the economy of the village now largely rests on the prosperity of the
nearby granite works and quarries, which add nothing to the otherwise wild beauty of
the place.
Many of the houses, grey and not a little forbidding, date from the 18th century,
while the market hall, with curious windows and round-headed arches, dates from a
few years after the village was granted a market charter in 1687. Although quiet now
by comparison, Shap remains an important staging post for walkers travelling east or
west.

Walk southwards through Shap along the A6, finally leaving it by turning
left onto a narrow housing-estate road (Moss Grove) directly opposite the