The Snake Pass — Could It Really Close for Good?

Despite being such a busy major route, the Snake Pass is one of my favourite roads in the Peak District, maybe because of the undulating, twisting tarmac, maybe because of the scenery straight out of a fairytale, or maybe because I have so many adrenaline-fuelled memories attached to it.

I have so many memories of the Snake, whether on drives, video shoots, or simply taking the fun route between Sheffield and Manchester. One of the standouts was about 10 years ago, in my early Supercar Driver days of helping with photography. I remember chasing a pack of supercars over the Snake in my little BMW M135i and spending a very accidental moment or two with all four wheels in the air. A few years later, I led a drive which started on an uncharacteristically deserted Snake. The pace was good to say the least, and we encountered only one car in our path on the 14 miles of tarmac between Ladybower Reservoir and Glossop. That was Michael Eyres’ first run with us in the 991 Turbo S he had back then. We’ve since become good friends and he still talks about that drive to this day!

Admittedly, we got very lucky that morning and it’s usually fairly busy, but regardless, the Snake deserves its reputation as one of the great driving roads in the UK, which may be a little ironic with the possibility in the air of the Snake Pass being closed to cars indefinitely.

Derbyshire County Council has warned that, closures due to landslips are becoming so frequent that they simply cannot afford to keep repairing the road, and have asked for government help to try and keep the famous road open in the event of a major landslip in the future.

The route opened as a toll road in 1821 after three years of construction, with the rapid growth of Sheffield requiring a convenient route to customers in Manchester and Liverpool, where goods were exported to America. Unfortunately, it was never a financial success, with its altitude leaving it exposed to snowy conditions which left it closed for months in winter, and even without snowfall, it was built on unstable ground.

With the advent of railways in the 1840s, the road was redundant until the first cars came about, and it was given its famous name after the opening of The Snake Inn along the route in the late 19th Century.

So, back to the matter at hand for us modern-day motorists, could they really close the Snake to cars? Well, there are areas where signs of disrepair are evident, with temporary traffic lights in place to direct traffic around the damaged tarmac. Charlotte Cupit, Derbyshire County Council's cabinet member for transport said, “We haven't got the resources to be able to carry out the repair, because that's many millions of pounds, and that would take it off the wider highways budget that we currently get”.

Derbyshire County Council has asked the Department for Transport to help with a landslips fund to help with the four landslips currently along the Snake along with future repairs, however the Department for Transport insists it is not responsible for the road.

We don’t typically get too political, but we’re certainly in a sorry state when councils are now so underfunded for road maintenance that a major route of over 200 years is at risk, and you might have noticed the state of the rest of the roads too...

How likely the road’s closure is, we of course don’t know as it is largely dependent on how much the land on the hillsides decides to stay in place rather than spill itself over the tarmac, but we sincerely hope the Snake gets the injection of funds it needs to restore it to its former glory, and that we can make many more memories for years to come.