The Cloisters sit at the bottom of Boroughgate, a covered market building with a castellated frontage that Sir Robert Smirke added in 1811. It was built around 1696, and for a long time it was the only place in Appleby where you were permitted to sell butter — and even then only after ten in the morning. This is the kind of town where the rules about butter were written down.
Boroughgate itself runs uphill from here, a market street wide enough to lose a horse fair down, with the castle gatehouse at the bottom and the Moot Hall and St Lawrence's Church at the top. Local guides describe it as one of the finest streets in England, and it is genuinely very wide. The High Cross stands at one end and the Low Cross at the other; they marked the boundaries of the old market, cheese sold at one, butter at the other. The High Cross carries the inscription "Retain your loyalty, preserve your rights."
For food, Low Howgill Butchers & Deli at 21 Boroughgate has been run by Steve and Jennie Allison since 2015. The beef and lamb come from Jennie's family farm — traditional-breed Shorthorn — alongside Herdwick lamb, homemade sausages and wild venison, with cooked meats and homemade pies at the deli counter. One TripAdvisor reviewer called it "Sausage paradise," which is a review the sausages have to live up to.
Two pubs anchor the town. The Royal Oak on Bongate is a former coaching inn over four hundred years old, near the River Eden, with oak panelling in the tap room and an open fire in the lounge. The kitchen does sticky steaks, fish and chips, meat pies, and sticky toffee pudding, and it takes dogs seriously: a dog-friendly tap room, a dedicated doggy menu, a doggy gift bag and in-room bowls. Up on the market square, the Tufton Arms is a Grade II listed hotel, originally a 16th-century coaching inn rebuilt by the Victorians, run by the Milsom family since 1989, with a Conservatory Restaurant and its own wine shop and bar.
The River Eden loops almost the whole way round the town, so the walking starts more or less at the door. The Two Rivers walk follows Hoff Beck past Rutter Force, a horseshoe waterfall beside a 16th-century mill, and runs about seven miles. Head north to Dufton, three or four miles, and you can join the Pennine Way up to High Cup Nick, a U-shaped glacial valley with the whole Eden Valley spread out below. The Settle–Carlisle line stops in town, with direct trains to Carlisle and Leeds; the A66 and the M6 at Penrith are fourteen miles west.
St Lawrence's holds Lady Anne Clifford, who died in 1676 and is buried in the family vault. She restored the castle, the churches and half the Eden Valley in her lifetime. The castle's keep, Caesar's Tower, is one of only three complete Norman keeps left in the country.
Each June the town fills for the Appleby Horse Fair, the largest traditional Gypsy fair in Europe, when horses are washed in the Eden and trotted up and down the flashing lane.
