Two days in the Yorkshire Dales to visit caves and to walk : Part 4 - Walking on the Ingleton Waterfalls Trail

To read the third post, click HERE.

This is the final installment and this is about my visit to a unique walk that is known as the Ingleton Waterfalls Trail. It is over 4 miles long and goes over several hills and dales in and around Ingleton. There are two rivers that roll down these hills and they tumble over rocks, creating waterfalls at many places. I started this trail from the main entrance. The ticket costs £ 6:00, and you are free to walk the entire trail at your own pace. The trail is tiring but also an adventure that one should not shy away from if one is physically able to do so. There are many stairs to climb up and down during the trail - over a thousand of them. and the entire trail can be very, very exhausting.

I took some photos and even chatted with some fellow walkers. The most curious artefact we all saw was a large tree trunk, now on its side with many branches chopped off and lying at various spots on the trail. This trunk (and its many severed branches) all had penny and dime coins hammered into it. The site of thousands of coins pushed into the bark of the trunk was truly unique. According to the prevailing legend, burying a coin inside the bark of the trunk of that tree brings good fortune to the person or persons who do this. 

Here are a few photos of this trunk and some other branches of it scattered around the main trunk:

After this, the waterfall trails went past four waterfalls and one gorge where the water flowed very rapidly in a deep gorge before it went on to form large pools with a slower flow. The entire walk was pure fun, even if tiring.  Here are some photos.

Experimenting with the B&W

One more in the same vein

Pecca Falls

One of the walking bridges on the trail

Beezel Falls

 At the end of this trail, I arrived, very exhausted, back to the trail reception via the village roads on the outside. Subsequently, Ian picked me up in his taxi and drove me to the Clapham station, where a timely bus replacement service initiated my return journey to Lancaster. Thence, it was a train to Preston and a return bus to Blackpool which brought me back home a little after 9:30 p.m. The 2-day holiday was finally over. 

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Two days in the Yorkshire Dales to visit caves and to walk : Part 3: White Scar Caves

Read my second of four posts HERE.

Today morning, on the second day of my two-day holiday to the Yorkshire Dales, I went to visit the White Scar caves near Ingleton. Ingleton is a neighbouring town to Clapham, and the way to go there was by hiring a private taxi. The guy who came to pick me up to go to the caves was one Ian Whithouse - or something similar to that. I really enjoyed his company. 

But even before that, it was the exhilarating breakfast Alan served me in the restaurant. I had expressly told him that I would not be eating pork or sausages; hence, he prepared a full English breakfast with boiled eggs instead of the pork. There were roasted tomatoes, fried mushrooms, a potato hash brown, and some potato chips as well. Additionally, I partook of a bowl of muesli with milk, a few slices of bread with butter and jam, and a glass of orange juice. Tea, of course, was served. 

Back to my journey, then. I arrived at the caves an hour before the opening times. and so hanged around the entrance in a room with a few tables and chairs. When the cave opened, I was in the first group. Our guide was Tom, a very knowledgeable and vocal person who made the visit really enjoyable. This venue was much bigger than the Ingleborough caves. The guided tour took around 70 minutes and involved a long walk of over a mile including the return to the outside. There were only six other visitors with me. Hence, we got a very good lesson and demonstrations of the various sounds and sights. 

These caves have dummies of human beings whose histories are tied into the history of the caves. There are internal waterfalls, and the flowstones and the stalactites and stalagmites have formed interesting shapes which have been given names based on what they look like - such as Judge's Head, Devil's tongue, Sword of Damocles, old woman's false teeth, witch's hat, witch's fingers. and so on. We also went up a long flight of stairs into an upper cave. On the way, we saw fossils within the walls - of clams, worms and other smaller organisms fixed in stone for over 200000 years - back in time when the caves were under water.

Here are some photos.

Main entrance of the White-Scar Cave

At the entrance

Dummy representing the discoverer of the cave, John Long, who found these caves in 1923

A waterfall inside the cave

Leaking surface water flows in between the crevasses

We walked over these wire meshes as a river flowed under our feet.

A limestone formation

A stalagmite

A calcite stone that forms the limestone caves

This could be Cleopatra even!

In this particular case, a stalactite and a stalagmite have fused together to form a column

This cave's version of a Sword of Damocles

Witch's fingers

Devil's tongue

Tom leading us up the flight of stairs

Fossils inside the walls

Fossil with a conserved phone

A newly formng stalactite is a hollow tube.

A stalactite close up

Hundreds of new stalactites inside the roof of the large cavern

Dummy of a young caver girl who discovered the new cavern above the older cave. The tiny hole next to the dummy is the opening she crawled through

After leaving the caves, I went on to return to Ingleton town with a fellow-tourist who gave me a lift in his car. He left me near the start of the Ingleton Waterfall Trail, which would be my next activity for the afternoon.

More on this activity in my next POST.