Stainmore Pass road

The Stainmore Pass road carried Roman supplies west across the Pennines from Cataractonium at Catterick to Glannoventa at Ravenglass on the Cumbrian coast. It climbed to four hundred and fifty metres at the top of Stainmore, where the fort at Lavatris at Bowes guarded the bleak summit. It was the connecting line between Dere Street and the Cumbrian forts: without it Roman Cumbria would have been cut off from the eastern half of the empire by the Pennine hills. The modern A66 follows the same pass. In bad weather it closes for the same reasons the Romans must have closed it.