Viewranger File Here
On 12th January 2020 Dan and I set off from home at 430am on a pitch black A1 road and hitting huge puddles of water that wrench the steering wheel from your hand. We stop for breakfast and eventually arrive in Malham at 930am. We get a free parking spot roadside by The National Park Car park. Here we meet Jay and his friend Brad, shortly after donning our waterproofs (as it was still raining lightly) and boots we set off.
Malham is a small village, in the Pennines, at the southern base of the Yorkshire Dales. It’s a pretty place, surrounded by limestone dry-stone walls, & with a stream running right through the middle of the village.
Mentioned in the Domesday book as ‘Malgun’, Malham has been a settlement for at least a thousand years. Traces of Iron age boundaries are still visible today. One hundred years ago, Malham was a place of mills and mines. Nowadays, hill farms and tourism are the main activities.
The usual crossing place was somewhat flooded due to the amount of recent rain so we walk on up to the bridge.
Malham Carved Limestone Boulder
Carved by Yorkshire Sculptor & Letter Cutter Richard Watts of Sheffield and commissioned by Polly James.
Quote is from William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, a conversation between Portia & Nerissa. “How many things by season season’d are, To their right praise and true perfection!” 5.1.107, Portia.
The stone is Hopton Wood Limestone from Derbyshire as more suited to carving than our local stone. Polly James has a long association and love for Malham and has donated the stone to the village and contributed to the forthcoming improvements to the beck side footpath.
Crossing the bridge we walk back a short way pass the flooded crossing point and onto the path leading to Janets Foss.
Please excuse some of the blurry pics, the camera lens was getting wet from the light rain and smearing.
We walk through Wedber Wood alongside the River.
There were a few interesting bug houses hanging up in the trees made from old books.
We are now approaching Janet's Foss Waterfall and it is in full flow due to the river flooding and you hear it a distance off.
Janet's Foss carries Gordale Beck over a limestone outcrop topped by tufa into a deep pool below. The pool was traditionally used for sheep dipping, a jolly event which drew in local village inhabitants for the social occasion.
The name Janet is believed to refer to a fairy queen held to inhabit a cave at the rear of the fall. Foss is a Nordic word for waterfall, still used in Scandinavia, and is presented in a number of cases in England as 'force'.
Janet's Foss is a magical and enchanting waterfall where the local Faerie queen, Janet (or Jennet) lives in a cave behind the falls. It's difficult at first to spot the cave behind the falls because another large cave to the right of the pool distracts visitors first. The fall is moss-covered tufa screen on calceous Gordale Beck that extends from the lip of the fall down to the level of the pool below produces a vivid display of shades of green and the calcite that comes up over the moss. The false-cave, open in site to the right of the pool across the stream has been called "Janet's Cave" even though it's not the true cave. According to records, this cave was inhabited by smelters working copper mines at Pikedaw in the west. The gully/valley the cave and falls resides in is covered wall to wall with wild garlic, believed to ward off evil or harm to those in the gully.
Janet's Foss was the location of the fictional Molkham Falls as featured in the 2006 independent British film, WATERFALL. Filming took place there in May 2006.
The below sign was as we exited the Foss, as the sign on the way in looks like its been stolen.
We walk out onto road and up a short way before we take the path that leads us to Gordale Scar. Apparently there is normally a burger/tea van here, but not today!
The path leading up has dramatic scenery but nothing compared to whats to come!
We turned the corner and then WOW! The amazing Gordale Scar towers over you and engulfs you!
Gordale Scar is a limestone ravine 1 mile (1.6 km) northeast of Malham, North Yorkshire, England. It contains two waterfalls and has overhanging limestone cliffs over 100 metres high. Gordale Scar was created during the Ice ages, melt water creating a cavern that eventually collapsed to create the waterfall and gorge you see today including smooth rocks formed by Tufa deposits. The stream flowing through the scar is Gordale Beck, which on leaving the gorge flows over Janet's Foss before joining Malham Beck two miles downstream to form the River Aire. A right of way leads up the gorge, but requires climbing approximately 10 feet of tufa at the lower waterfall.
William Wordsworth wrote in the sonnet Gordale, "let thy feet repair to Gordale chasm, terrific as the lair where the young lions couch".
James Ward created a large and imaginative painting of it that can be seen in Tate Britain.
J. M. W. Turner also painted a picture of it in 1816, also to be seen in Tate Britain.
The waterfall was used for an exterior scene in Jim Henson’s Dark Crystal.
Limestone and Tufa are features of Gordale Scar and surrounding areas with the Tufa forming on the limestone rocks, Tufa is formed by calcium carbonate rich water precipitation. Limestone Clints (the blocks of limestone) and Grykes (the gaps) creating a unique wildlife habitat or micro-climate for rare wild flowers and ferns such as wood sorrel, Herb Robert, Green Spleenwort and Wall Rue.
This great limestone gorge is one of the most spectacular sights in the country. It is somewhere around 15-16 million years old.
Many people believe Gordale could have inspired J R R Tolkien to create Helm's Deep, the valley with a walled fortress that appears in his second Lord of the Rings novel, The Two Towers. In the book, there is a stream running through the gorge.
It's also been suggested that Cheddar Gorge in Somerset, which Tolkien visited on his honeymoon in 1916, could have been the basis for Helm's Deep, but he also spent five years as a professor of English at the University of Leeds in the 1920s, and is likely to have ventured into the Dales during his time there.
Jay and his friend Brad were convinced they were climbing up the waterfall and normally you can, but today it is in full flow. I could see no way up and staying dry, so Dan and I left Jay and Brad to attempt this crazy climb and we walked back up the way we came to take a dry but muddy path to Malham Cove.
I later found out Jay and Bard didn't manage to climb up but did get very wet and up to their knees in water, glad I didn't attempt it now!
So after rejoining the road we turn right and take a footpath just over the bridge and climb the slippery and muddy path.
The views that were opening up as we climbed were amazing!
This is my first real visit to Yorkshire, went once years ago to Scarborough but didn't really get about much. So I am gobsmacked at its beauty and really need to get up and see more of this county!
After climbing to the top we are treated to great views down into the valley below!
We cross a road over a stile and onto the muddy path that now leads us to Malham Cove.
Almost there!
Now the magnificent cove comes into view and again its a WOW moment!
Malham Cove is a large curved limestone formation 0.6 miles (1 km) north of the village of Malham, North Yorkshire, England. It was formed by a waterfall carrying meltwater from glaciers at the end of the last Ice Age more than 12,000 years ago. Today it is a well-known beauty spot within the Yorkshire Dales National Park. A large limestone pavement is above the cove.
The cove was formed by a large Ice-age river that fell at this point as a cataract. The water drop was 80 m (260 ft) high and more than 300 m (980 ft) wide. The water flowing over the waterfall created the curved shape of the cove because the lip was more heavily eroded than the sides.
Today the water course is marked by a stream that flows out of Malham Tarn 1.5 mi (2.4 km) north of the cove. It goes underground at 'Water Sinks' about 1 mi (1.6 km) before the top of the cove. Another stream named Malham Beck emerges from a cave at the bottom of the cove. The two streams were once thought to be one and the same, but experiments with dyes have shown that they are two separate waterways that go underground at different places. Their paths cross without mixing behind the limestone cliff, re-emerging a few miles apart. The experiments show that there is a complex system of caves and tunnels in the limestone cliff. The system is estimated to be about 50,000 years old. Cave divers, entering the system through the cave at the base of the cove, have so far explored about 1 mi (1.6 km).
The cave systems usually carry away any water before they reach the fall; however, Malham Cove temporarily became a waterfall for what is believed to be the first time in centuries on 6 December 2015, after heavy rainfall from Storm Desmond.
The priest and noted antiquary, Thomas West described the cove in 1779 as, "This beautiful rock is like the age-tinted wall of a prodigious castle; the stone is very white, and from the ledges hang various shrubs and vegetables, which with the tints given it by the bog water. & c. gives it a variety that I never before saw so pleasing in a plain rock."
On the west side of the 80 metre (260 foot) high cliff face are about 400 irregular stone steps: these form part of the route of the Pennine Way and lead to an uneven limestone pavement at the top.
We stop here for lunch and take in the views, we took the decision to cut short the walk and not walk up to Malham Tarn but continue across the pavement and back down into Malham.
The cove, along with nearby Gordale Scar, was featured in an episode of the BBC TV series Seven Natural Wonders as one of the natural wonders of Yorkshire.
The Pavement was used as a shooting location for the 1992 film version of "Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights"
The cove was also featured in the film Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part 1) as one of the places Hermione and Harry travel to. The scenes were filmed in November 2009.
The limestone pavement and general location of Malham featured in an episode of The Trip starring Steve Coogan and Rob Brydon which aired on BBC2 on 29 November 2010.
The cove is the bridgehead of an alien invasion in Charles Stross’ 2016 novel The Nightmare Stacks.
We carefully walked across the very slippery limestone pavement.
The geology of the Yorkshire Dales is predominantly of limestone, which gives rise to many spectacular and scenic surface (as well as underground) natural features. One such type of surface feature are the "limestone pavements" - plateaus of bare and weathered rock often being found at the top of the limestone cliffs (known locally as "scars") running along the hillsides. These were originally formed by the scouring action of glaciers during the last ice age, excellent examples being seen at e.g. the top of Malham Cove, White Scars and Southerscales (near Ingleton) and on the plateau of Moughton (near Austwick).
Due to the mildly corrosive effects of slightly acidic rain water on the limestone (a process which also leads to the formation of caves and potholes in the dales) deep crevases slowly develop in the rock so that the limestone pavements are actually a "mosaic" of interlocking "clints" and "grykes" (which makes these limestone pavements - despite their name - actually quite difficult and hazardous to walk across !)
Rare alpine plants (including saxifrage) flourish in the crevasses, and limestone pavements offer a unique habitat for many species. Unfortunately,however, some of the finest examples of limestone pavements are under threat, not just from casual visitors attempting to collect rockery materials for their gardens (which is actually illegal in protected areas), but in some cases from large scale industrial quarrying operations (which are still permitted to take place even within the boundaries of the national park).
We now walk down a stone path of steps, glad we are going down this way and not up it'd be a hell of a climb. It is hard going on my knee going down though.
As we reach the bottom we get to the the huge scale of this cove.
This whole area really is amazing and I'm glad I took the time and the long drive up to witness this in the flesh!
Today the cove is very popular with climbers because of its number of climbing routes (many of which can be ascended in the rain). The cove offers easy to hard traditional climbs as well as sport climbing, including the UK's first 9b grade sport climb Due to the cliff's south face, it is a popular venue for rock climbing in winter, its aspect making it a sun trap; in summer, however, the rock face can become unbearably hot.
We follow the stream back down into the village.
Once down into the village we use the toilets, visit a shop and walk back towards the car.
We pass the Buck Inn. Built in 1874 on the site of an old coaching inn on the Pennine way, The Buck has 10 en-suite bedrooms and is within walking distance of the enchanting Malham Cove, Malham Tarn, Janet’s Foss and Gordale Scar and has been featured on Julia Bradbury's Best Walks with a View and Adrian Edmonson's The Dales.
Now at just over 5 miles we are back at the car, where we drive onto Skipton where we will spend the night. A fantastic walk indeed!
