The Yorkshire Dales
In 2016 the Yorkshire Dales National Park grew by nearly a quarter, and some of its newest ground lies in Cumbria. The result is a landscape of limestone, waterfalls and walls.
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Quick Facts
- Location
- Northern Pennines and western Pennines, across North Yorkshire and Cumbria
- National Park designated
- 1954, extended in 2016
- Area
- Roughly 2,180 square km (about 840 square miles) since the 2016 extension
- Highest point
- Whernside, 736 m
- Three Peaks
- Whernside (736 m), Ingleborough (723 m) and Pen-y-ghent (694 m)
- Landmark viaduct
- Ribblehead Viaduct, 24 arches, opened for the Settle–Carlisle line in the 1870s
- Famous drop
- Hardraw Force, England's tallest single-drop waterfall above ground at about 30 m
- Famous cheese
- Wensleydale, made at Hawes
The national park that crossed the border
The Yorkshire Dales became a national park in 1954, among the first batch in England and Wales. Even then it included some ground that is now in Cumbria: Sedbergh, Dent and the southern Howgill Fells were already inside the boundary, and became administratively part of Cumbria in 1974. Then, in 2016, the park expanded again, adding the northern Howgills, the Orton Fells, Mallerstang and other land. That increased its area by about 24%, close to a quarter in one go. The addition was worth having. The Howgills are smooth, steep-sided hills that look like draped velvet, quite unlike the stepped limestone further east. The name is also slightly misleading, because 'dale' simply means valley. Swaledale, Wharfedale, Wensleydale, Ribblesdale and the rest are each a different character. Wensleydale is the odd one out, since it is named after a village rather than the river Ure that runs through it.
Why the ground here looks so strange
The Dales sit on Carboniferous limestone, and it shapes almost everything you see. Rain dissolves the rock, leaving caves, sinkholes, scars and pale pavements of cracked stone. Malham Cove is the showpiece, an 80-metre curved cliff topped by a limestone pavement. The cracks in it are called grikes and the blocks between them clints. Film fans know it as the spot where Harry and Hermione camp in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1. Underneath the Three Peaks country the ground is hollow. At Gaping Gill, Fell Beck drops about 98 metres down a shaft into a chamber big enough to hold a cathedral. Twice a year, potholing clubs rig a winch so that members of the public can be lowered in.
The viaduct built by people nobody remembers
Ribblehead Viaduct is the Dales' great man-made landmark. Its 24 arches stride across bleak moorland, built to carry the Midland Railway's Settle–Carlisle line, which opened in the 1870s. The navvies who built it lived in shanty camps on the moor with names such as Batty Green, Sebastopol and Jerusalem. Disease, including a smallpox outbreak, killed many of them, and the churchyard at Chapel-le-Dale holds a memorial to those who died. The line was threatened with closure in the 1980s. A campaign to save it succeeded in 1989, and the viaduct is still carrying trains over Batty Moss.
Waterfalls, walls and a very famous cheese
Hardraw Force is England's tallest single-drop waterfall above ground. You reach it through a separate ticketed entrance beside the Green Dragon Inn in Hardraw. The natural amphitheatre around it has such good acoustics that brass bands held competitions there in Victorian times. Aysgarth Falls, a staircase of cascades on the Ure, appeared in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves in 1991. Buttertubs Pass, near Thwaite, has deep limestone potholes beside the road. Then there are the dry stone walls, which run for thousands of miles over the fells, with a barn in nearly every field. Many date from the enclosure of the 18th and 19th centuries. Hawes is the home of Wensleydale cheese, which became a national treasure thanks to Wallace and Gromit.
Herriot country and the three-peak slog
The Dales are strongly linked to James Herriot, the pen name of vet Alf Wight, whose stories became All Creatures Great and Small. The TV adaptations have filmed in villages such as Grassington and Hawes, so stone cottages and tight lanes look familiar to many viewers. Then there is the Yorkshire Three Peaks challenge. Pen-y-ghent, Whernside and Ingleborough make a circuit of about 24 miles from Horton in Ribblesdale. The traditional target is to finish within 12 hours. Ingleborough has traces of an Iron Age hillfort on its flat summit, a reminder that people have been living up here for a very long time.
What to look for when you go
Look out for the Swaledale sheep with their dark faces and white muzzles, and for the small stone field barns that dot the hillsides. In early summer the upland hay meadows near Muker in Swaledale are full of wildflowers. Lead mining left ruined smelt mills and spoil heaps on the fells above Gunnerside. The Settle–Carlisle line is a good way to see the landscape. The Ribblehead stop gives you the best view of the viaduct from below.
Notable people
- James Herriot (Alf Wight)
- Kevin Costner
Test yourself
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