The Buttertubs Pass connects Wensleydale and Swaledale across the moorland ridge that separates the two valleys. The road climbs from Hawes in the south, crosses the watershed at just over 1,700 feet, and drops into Thwaite at the head of Swaledale — a distance of about six miles, almost entirely on open moorland, with no significant shelter and very little traffic on a weekday morning.
In July 2014, an estimated 10,000 people lined this road to watch the Tour de France climb it.
The organisers designated it the Cote de Buttertubs on the Stage 1 route from Leeds to Harrogate — the first time the Tour had ever visited British soil. The decision to route the stage over this particular crossing was not accidental. The pass looks extraordinary on television: the open moor, the dry stone walls running straight up the hillside, the peloton strung out across the pale road against the sky. The Tour's camera helicopters were designed for Alpine drama; the Buttertubs gave them something they had not filmed before.
The name is older than road cycling by several centuries. At the summit of the pass there are natural limestone potholes — cylindrical shafts dropping vertically into the rock, some of them over twenty feet deep, their sides green with fern and moss. These are the Buttertubs.
Farmers travelling the packhorse route over the pass to Hawes market would rest their butter churns in the cold air of these shafts on warm days, keeping the butter firm until they reached the market. The potholes served as a natural refrigerator for the upland farming economy of Swaledale and Wensleydale for centuries before anyone thought to race bicycles over the ridge.
The potholes are accessible from the road — there is a small parking area at the summit and a short path to the shaft edges. They are deeper than they look from the approach and require care; the edges are unfenced. Looking down into them on a still day, the fern-covered walls dropping into cool shadow, is one of the minor geological surprises of the Dales.
The drive over the Buttertubs Pass is one of the finest short journeys in the Yorkshire Dales. The climb from Hawes begins in typical Dales farmland — dry stone walls, limestone barns, the upper Wensleydale pasture — before the walls give way to open moorland and the road begins to rise steeply. The summit plateau is bleak in the manner of the high Dales: heather and cotton grass, a wide sky, the view north and east into Swaledale opening as you cross the watershed.
The descent into Swaledale is steeper than the Wensleydale side and gives one of the finest views of the upper dale — the valley floor visible far below, the village of Thwaite at the junction of two becks, the Swaledale fells stretching east toward Reeth and Richmond.
On a clear day the view from the summit plateau extends across two complete valleys. You are standing in the geographic middle of the Yorkshire Dales, with Wensleydale behind and Swaledale ahead, and the moor in every direction.
The Buttertubs Pass is on the route of our Brontë Country Day Trip as we travel between the Lake District and Haworth — the crossing giving a dramatic high point between Hawes and the eastern Dales. On the All Creatures Great and Small tour, the pass is part of the Swaledale section of the day — we cross from Wensleydale into Swaledale at the summit and descend into the upper dale where the programme's most iconic filming locations are found.
Your expert storyteller will explain the name, the Tour de France story and the geology of the limestone potholes as we cross. The stop at the summit to look at the Buttertubs themselves takes about ten minutes and is, for most guests, one of the more unexpected pleasures of the day — an unassuming natural feature with a history considerably more interesting than its appearance suggests.
The Buttertubs Pass is on the Brontë Country Day Trip and the All Creatures Great and Small tour.