Echo Memories investigates the legacy of drovers - hardened men, often from the Scottish Highlands - who marched cattle and sheep hundreds of miles to market in the 18th and 19th centuries, leaving behind a network of remote tracks and the occasional inn.

SCATTERED across the British Isles are many inns, several of them in North Yorkshire, which may now appear to be in the middle of nowhere. To call them simply remote would be an understatement.

Some such properties ceased to fulfil what had once been their purpose, gradually fell into disrepair and then disappeared.

Some survived and are still in use. Today, it would be said of most that they were "off the beaten track". However, there was a time when they were allimportant hostelries, very much "on the beaten track", a nationwide network of routeways, most of which are no longer in existence, although some were eventually converted into what are now metalled, usually single-track, modern roads, sometimes quite wide and with much broader than usual verges on either side.

While some of these routes were created and used by trains of packhorses, the majority were drovers' roads, used by the men they were named after who transported cattle, sheep and occasionally horses, geese and turkeys long distances on the hoof, from one place to another.

This was done for sound economic reasons, usually to move them from the best grazing areas to large settlements where there was the greatest demand for meat.

It has been estimated that some of these routes were in use for as long as 6,000 years, created originally by Bronze Age man as he moved his animals from one grazing area to another.

It seems certain that by the Iron Age, from 600BC to the Roman period, animals were being moved to markets on at least an annual basis.

By the late 17th Century, the greatest demand was from the towns and cities, many of whose populations grew rapidly during the Industrial Revolution, where people had no way of producing their own food.

Drovers in Britain were the forebears of the cowboys of the American West, who banded together to drive huge herds of cattle vast distances to deliver them to market. British drovers tended not to move so many beasts together, one experienced man with a boy and two dogs usually herding between 30 and 50. Drovers sometimes banded together so that herds of 300 to 2,000 could be moved together.

In this part of Britain, small cattle from Scotland were driven, often by Highlanders, on foot or horseback, from various parts of Scotland into Northumberland and Cumbria and then on to York, Malton or the immense cattle marts held at venues such as Malham Moor, near Skipton.

These were then butchered locally, sold to be fattened up in the area or moved even further south, sometimes by a different drover, making their way to London's Smithfield Market or other destinations.

The reason that many Highland Scots were among the most common drovers was that it was their part of the country that deliberately overproduced cattle so that, as well as having enough to eat, the Highland farmers and crofters could sell the surplus to earn some ready cash which was always hard to come by.

The drovers either bought the cattle outright from the farmer or would work for a fee and were completely trusted by the cattle owners to take the animals south and return with their money. These negotiations took place in May, the drovers happy to make deals on even a single animal, and over the summer a herd was gathered.

For a time, the majority of Highland cattle, hardy but easy to handle, were small and black, each animal averaging only about five hundredweight.

Their appearance changed in the middle of the 19th Century when they began to be randomly cross-bred, while at pasture, with a brown or red breed from Glen Lyon. This then gradually became the dominant colour of all Kyloes, as these cattle are called.

When the drove was expected to be over stony tracks or, later, on metalled roads, the cattle were fitted with metal shoes.

Drovers' roads almost invariable kept away from valley routes, where they had to negotiate other traffic.

Instead, in the west of this region they ran along ridges to travel over the tops of Teesdale, Wensleydale and Wharfedale, via the inn at Tan Hill, and on down the spine of England.

In the east, one route was Black Hambleton past Osmotherley and Helmsley.

Chequers, a formers drovers' inn on that route, still welcomes travellers about a 2km to the east of Osmotherley.

An average daily travelling distance for Highland cattle was only about 15 to 20km and the drovers had to do their best to arrive each evening at a place, preferably one they knew, where there was grazing for the animals and an inn where they could find shelter.

Failing that, they would sleep in the open, no matter what the weather, and one of them would have to stay awake to guard the herd.

From the Highland pastures, the drovers would travel south to Lowland towns such as Falkirk and Crieff, where they could sell on their cattle to others who moved them on to Northern England, where they would be fattened up before being taken to their final destinations.

In 1777, 90,000 head of cattle were sold in Falkirk and by 1850 the number had risen to 150,000.

Sir Walter Scott, in his story The Two Drovers, paints a vivid picture of a drove from the Scottish Highlands.

"It had been a brisk market, several dealers had attended from the northern and midland counties in England, and English money had flown so merrily about as to gladden the hearts of the Highland farmers. Many large droves were about to set off for England, under the protection of their owners, or of the topsmen whom they employed in the tedious, laborious, and responsible office of driving the cattle for many hundred miles, from the market where they had been purchased, to the fields or farm-yards where they were to be fattened for the shambles.

"The Highlanders in particular are masters of this difficult trade of driving, which seems to suit them as well as the trade of war. It affords exercise for all their habits of patient endurance and active exertion. They are required to know perfectly the drove-roads, which lie over the wildest tracts of the country, and to avoid as much as possible the highways, which distress the feet of the bullocks, and the turnpikes, which annoy the spirit of the drover; whereas on the broad green or grey track, which leads across the pathless moor, the herd not only move at ease and without taxation, but, if they mind their business, may pick up a mouthful of food by the way.

"At night, the drovers usually sleep along with their cattle, let the weather be what it will; and many of these hardy men do not once rest under a roof during a journey on foot from Lochaber to Lincolnshire.

They are paid very highly, for the trust reposed is of the last importance, as it depends on their prudence, vigilance and honesty, whether the cattle reach the final market in good order, and afford a profit to the grazier. But as they maintain themselves at their own expense, they are especially economical in that particular. A Highland drover was victualled for his long and toilsome journey with a few handfuls of oatmeal and two or three onions, renewed from time to time, and a ram's horn filled with whisky, which he used regularly, but sparingly, every night and morning."

The oatmeal Scott mentions was eaten cold with water or whiskey, or boiled to make porridge, but the drovers gained extra sustenance by taking blood from one of the cattle and mixing that with the oatmeal to make a simple black pudding.

Just outside the town of Kirkby Stephen, in east Cumbria, the Halfpenny House pub took its name from the fee it charged for each bullock to graze on its land each night or day it was pastured there. Such a charge was usual.

In dry weather, a large herd of driven cattle could be an alarming prospect, with men shouting, clouds of dust rising around them, the beasts lowing loudly and the drovers' dogs barking.

Honest drovers did their best not to integrate cattle from the farms they passed.

The tradition of droving did not end suddenly. It gradually faded away, starting in the 1820s. Big, fat cattle were by then being reared in the Scottish and Welsh lowlands and across the whole of England. Much of what had formerly been common pasture was enclosed and turned into fields to which the drovers had no right of access. By the 1830s, steamships had become commonplace, faster and with greater capacity, so that Scottish farmers could use them to ship their cattle quickly to English ports, where, by the 1880s, the rail system was so well integrated that they could be moved by train to their intended destinations.