 In western Europe, where prehistoric roads have been extensively documented with the help of itineraries, traces on old maps and extant marks on the landscape, ridgeways are a typical feature of long-distance ancient routes through rugged, high-rainfall parts of Germany and across the island of Great Britain.These ancient trackways generally ran along the hilltops, only descending when necessary to cross valleys.As such, they are an opposite to modern-style roads, which tend to run along the valleys and only ascend when necessary to cross the hilltops.