A593

Route

The A593 is a scenic cross-country road in the Lake District. It is for the most part a Lancashire road and has the distinctive former LCC village entrance signs.

Broughton in Furness - Ambleside

The A593 at Town End

The road starts at a junction with the A595 at High Cross Brow just outside the village of Broughton which lies just over on the Lancashire side of the traditional boundary with Cumberland. Both roads used to go through the village centre.

After skirting round the edge of Broughton the road starts its climb up the Duddon and Lickle valleys, going through the hamlet of Lower Hawthwaite and past Rosthwaite. The road is narrow, twisty and hill for the whole of its length to Torver (and then it doesn't get a lot better) and there are several locations of single file traffic, some with passing places. It also has a 7.5T weight limit. We meet the A5084 from Lowick Green at Torver near the southern end of Coniston Water after the very best bit of the whole road as it now lies along the alignment of the former Broughton to Coniston railway. We follow the lake but don't see much of it and a few miles further on we reach the busy touristy village of Coniston which, unusually for a village of its size, boasts both primary and secondary schools. Here in the centre of the village we meet the western terminus of the B5285 from the Windermere ferry.

After Coniston the road starts to climb again along the side of the Coniston Fells and the foot of the Langdale valleys to reach Skelwith Bridge where we cross from "real" Lancashire into Westmorland. The B5343 leads off up Great Langdale from here and the A593 turns east and heads downstream alongside the River Brathay to Clappersgate where the Brathay joins the River Rothay and flows into Windermere. Again, we're too far from the lake for it to be visible from the road.

Here at a junction with the short A5075 we enter the market and tourist-trap town of Ambleside and join its one-way system. The road multiplexes with spurs of the A591 taking northbound traffic round the back of the town centre along Rothay Road and Compston Road finally coming to an end and joining the main A591 near the Bridge House Information Centre (subject of thousands of postcards and other souvenirs) at Compston Corner.

Limitations

The A593 is prohibited to vehicles 7.5T or above between Broughton and Torver.

The road is narrow - hopefully, you'll meet oncoming vehicles where there are convenient passing places.

Original Author(s): Carl Ryding