Its a shame the Map Man episode about Bartholomew Road Maps isn’t on the iplayer anymore. Cyclsts from the CTC used to asses roads for their car-worthiness – so before someone threw that Austin up the hill the route would have been scouted by cyclists and the map would show the chances the car would have of making it.

It was TV gold just for seeing Nicholas Crane take on the Black Sail Pass with rod brakes

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0078y2t

that’s mad, ‘only full throttle and and lowest gear will it see it up this bit’

bouncing the suspension it off its bumpers – marvellous!

Great little documentary. Fancy doing roads and tracks like that on its modern equivalent?

And why all old bikes were really gravelbikes.

Maybe we need the gravelcar. 🙂

But it’s a shame we’ve lost all those great tracks to tarmac and cars now. Look at the foot traffic on them even in the remote bits.

Interesting to see that Garburn Pass, Walna Scar and much of the Borrowdale Bash were motorable. Shows how much erosion has taken place over the years. Also Blea Tarn, Wrynose and Hardknott were yet to be tarmacked.

Lakeland roads only began to be tarmacked during the 1930s, my mum remembered that the A590 to Ulverston was still gravel when she started at school there – if she got detention then she’d miss the bus and would have to walk home, all twelve miles of it 😳

There was talk at the time of tarmacking the track over Styhead Pass between Wasdale and Borrowdale rather than Hardknott but obviously they settled on the latter.

Loved that. Gobsmacked a car could get up garburn road at the beginning, let alone the rest of it!

Would love to have seen some of the descents, how the hell did they get past the steepest, rockiest bit of the decent to Rosthwaite from Watlendath!? Would it really have been that much different?

Yep, enjoyed that, plecid beauteh, water spleshes and all.

Brummy registration so factory car I assume (or rather, fectoreh). Wonder how many breakdowns they had.

Cool vid though

It was TV gold just for seeing Nicholas Crane take on the Black Sail Pass with rod brakes

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0078y2t

That’s a blast from the past, filmed in 2004! I was cast in the role of “Mountain Safety Expert” in that programme. I was supposed to give Nick Crane a hard time for being ill equipped. Nick helpfully removed his head torch from his bag so that I had something to pull him up on.

Marvellous. Thanks very much for finding that.My jaw was on the floor for most of it.
Aces.

@boggie62 – from wikipedia:

In 1936, the Cumberland Highways Committee considered, and rejected, a proposal to make the pass more accessible to motors by laying down a new road surface and making other improvements. However, during the Second World War the War Office used the area for tank training completely destroying the existing road surface. After the war the wartime damage was repaired and tarmacced. A decade after the local government had rejected opening the highway to vehicles, the war’s legacy had inadvertently created a direct motor route between Ambleside and Eskdale for the first time.

Wikipedia doesn’t note when Wrynose Pass was tarmacked but it was probably around the same time.

Interesting to see how grassy Garburn was back then. Also note that it didn’t actually show it cresting or descending Garburn and lots of the other tricky bits on the other passes – maybe some artistic editing of what it actually managed?….

Saying that, the Lakeland VSCC trial manages to get up lots of gnarly stuff.

It’s quite likely that some of the roughest bits now would have been far better maintained back then.

Or simply not trashed by the passage of time/traffic.

That was excellent. Thanks.

Loved that film! The driver knows a thing or two about the importance of momentum. The car is of a smilar era and ladder chassis/live axle/leaf spring design to a series Land Rover except not 4WD, so no reason why it shouldn’t go anywhere a Landy can go in dry conditions with most of the weight on the driving wheels. Got nice narrow tyres as well for good ground pressure and grip.

That was lovely, thanks so much for posting, really enjoyed that 🙂

I absolutely enjoyed every moment of that.

To see that little car driving up and down tracks that I’ve tried to mtbike up is amazing.