This bridge, at Squat Beck, near Whiteless Pike, Buttermere, was one of many damaged during the floods

Next week marks the first anniversary of the unprecedented floods in Cumbria that caused devastation in many of the area’s towns and villages.

The district’s mountains and valleys also took a pounding, with many of the paths and bridleways which are vital to the area’s tourism trade suffering damage, putting some of them out of action.

Now, national park bosses have unveiled a £1.7m programme of repairs to the area’s rights of way to restore the network to its pre-floods condition.

The park’s field teams and contractors have already repaired 86 footpaths, 41 bridleways, and 75 bridges in the past year. 37 path surfaces damaged during the deluge have also been restored.

Further work will also make the routes more resilient to damage by flooding in the future.

The full range of work needed to restore the access network will include the replacement or repair of all 253 missing or damaged bridges carrying rights of way; repairs and improvements to the 84 paths that were severely damaged, and another 61 paths that will have improved or replacement stiles, gates and signs.

Work already completed includes a 1.5km section of the Garburn Pass between Troutbeck and Kentmere, that involved resurfacing, stone pitching and soil inversion.

A large part of the cash for the work came from the North West Development Agency which is releasing funding from the Rural Development Programme for England, a scheme running from 2007 to 2013 which aims to transform the rural economy and is jointly funded by the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the European Union, and managed by the NWDA. The national park authority has worked closely with Cumbria County Council in the project.

The national park’s paths for the public co-ordinator Dylan Jackman said: “This support will contribute to the overall recovery programme that will deliver a range of repair, restoration and improvement to the countryside access infrastructure. The work will bring about greater accessibility for a wider and more diverse audience.

“This in turn will help to sustain and improve the economic contribution that countryside access makes to the tourist economy of Cumbria and the Lake District national park. It’s amazing the transformation that has already occurred just a year after the floods, now this additional work will bring about even more dramatic improvements.”