Dent – England’s highest station

If you want to truly get away from it all, then you can’t get much closer to that than Dent. It’s England’s highest station, which you’ll find on the beautiful Settle & Carlisle Line. So what’s there, how can you get to it and why is there a station there in the first place? Let’s take a look.

Where is England’s highest station?

England’s highest (mainline) station is Dent, in Cumbria. Don’t let the name fool you though, as it’s almost five miles from the village of Dent itself. The station serves the small village of Cowgill.

It’s a stop on the famous Settle & Carlisle Line and isn’t far from Blea Moor, home to Britain’s most remote signal box. If you take a train that runs from Leeds to Carlisle, then almost every service will make a stop at Dent on the way.

It’s also in the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Put simply, it’s in one of the most rural, but also beautiful parts of Britain.

How can I visit England’s highest station?

England’s highest station might be in a remote area, but that doesn’t make it impossible to visit! You’ll find at least six trains per day in each direction (five on Sundays) on the route between Carlisle and Leeds.

It takes around 1h15m to reach England’s highest station from Carlisle, and around 1h25m to reach it from Leeds. We paid a visit ourselves to see what it was like:

Dent is the place for you if you’re looking for complete silence and tranquillity. You can even rent out the station cottage in the photo above! When we arrived, one person got off with us (complete with hiking gear) and we were briefly joined by a Dutch father and son, too. They were in a car though, and just wanted to tick off a short visit to England’s highest station.

Despite being (quite literally) in the middle of nowhere, Dent Station still has most of the mod cons you’d expect. It has screens with live train information as well as a heated waiting room on each platform. So, if you get caught in the rain or snow (not uncommon up here), there’s a place to thaw before the train arrives.

What lies beyond the station? Well, there are some rather fantastic views:

If the weather is playing ball, there are plenty of hikes to do in the local area, as well as to another station on the route, so there’s no need to turn around and come back!

On a Saturday morning, there’s also the S1S bus service to and from Kendal. It leaves Dent Station at 10:53. Buses also leave Kendal (Morrisons) at 09:23 and 16:08.

Why does England’s highest station exist?

It does seem a bit peculiar to have a station right in the middle of nowhere, doesn’t it? After all, there’s a long-running joke along the lines of:

“Excuse me, Sir, why is Dent station so far from the village?”

“Well, they had to build it next to the railway track”

There wasn’t an awful lot to serve, even back when the station was opened in 1877. However, shipments of essential goods such as coal would reach the surrounding hamlets through Dent Station.

In the opposite direction, livestock from nearby farms would make their way across the country after being loaded into cattle wagons here. As a passenger station, it was never going to be as bustling as Clapham Junction, but it still came complete with a complement of staff (one of them has written about their experiences here).

Dent Station was closed in 1970, as part of a general run-down of the line by British Rail. During this time, the station was rented out to a school in Burnley and used for outdoor activities. However, instead of outright closure, the line (and station) had a reprieve in May 1989, after a campaign to keep the line open.

So, today, Dent Station exists as a connection to the outside world for the nearby hamlets, and as a gateway to many beautiful hikes for the tourists that flock to the Yorkshire Dales.

Is there anything else I should know?

If you want to pay a visit to England’s highest station, then we’d recommend booking your tickets through Railsmartr. We don’t charge any refund or exchange fees, so there’s no penalty for changing your mind. We’ve just introduced a brand-new account feature too, so if your tickets are refundable, you can do this yourself in a couple of clicks.

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