In August 2008, when the A74 was still an all-purpose road across the Cumberland Gap, the Highways Agency took out a special order to ban cyclists and pedestrians from the route, advising them to use the A7 to Longtown instead.
Settlements in and around the Black Mountains include Hay-on-Wye, Llangors, Talgarth, Crickhowell, Cwmdu, each in Powys, Abergavenny in Monmouthshire and Longtown in Herefordshire.
•
Another impressive set of landslip forms can be seen at Black Darren and Red Darren ('Darren' signifies 'edge' in Welsh) on the eastern side of the Hatterrall ridge west of Longtown.
It is only five miles north of Longtown, where the disease was first spotted at the livestock market.
Earl Harold was given the task of counter-attacking, and seems to have built a fortification at Longtown in Herefordshire before refortifying Hereford.
Carwinley near Longtown north of Carlisle is thought to represent Caer Wenddolau or Gwenddolau's Fort.
In 2012, a parcel of forty barmines being shipped by rail on a Ministry Of Defence train from DMC Longtown to Oxfordshire disappeared while in transit.
Several farms in the area were devastated by the 2001 foot and mouth crisis which spread rapidly via the local livestock market at Longtown.
The proposal was to create three Central Ammunition Depots (CAD) in easily-hewn and relatively horizontal rocks of the Welsh borders: one in the south (Monkton Farleigh); one in the north of England (Longtown, Cumbria); and one in the Midlands (Nesscliffe).