Ninety-Year-Old Recounts Snowy Isolation at Britain's Highest Pub

In October 2025, ninety-year-old Audrey Yeardley returned to Tan Hill Inn, Britain's highest pub, to reunite with other former landladies and family members who had called the remote Yorkshire Dales location home. Yeardley reflects on how her time living at the 1,732ft (528m) above sea level pub in the 1960s prepared her for later challenges, noting "if this doesn't beat you, you're going to get through."

Yeardley and her family were trapped at the pub for 13 weeks in 1963 due to snow drifts reaching 20ft high, without electricity or running water. She describes boiling snow and living off potatoes until local farmers could deliver supplies. "It's not been beaten yet," Yeardley says, still smiling about the isolation. "You just have to do your best to survive it. You have a challenge, it might have you on your knees sometimes but I owe a lot down to character-building."

Sue Hanson, who ran the pub from 1985 to 1985, also shares her experiences, describing it as "the best of times and the worst of times" but says she wouldn't trade it "for the world, there's not a single regret." The current owner, Andrew Hields, says the reunion is a way to preserve the pub's legacy, as each chapter of its history is "interesting" and worth capturing.

For Kim Longden, who lived at Tan Hill Inn until age 22 when her parents bought it in 1985, the pub remains a "very homely place" she can still envision from her nearby home. The remote location and tight-knit community left a lasting impression on all the women who called this iconic Yorkshire Dales pub home.