Exploring Yorkshire - Malham Tops
For a change of scenery, during August I decided to pay a couple of visits to the White Rose county of Yorkshire, and in particular the limestone wilderness around Settle and Malham in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.
Malham Tops - 3rd August 2019
I had visited Malham a few times previously over the years, exploring the famous Malham Cove and Gordale Scar, but had never really explored what lay to the north, apart from a very brief visit to Malham Tarn.
I decided to head to Malham Tarn, and the small car park there, which would be the starting point for my walk. It was Saturday lunchtime, and the car park was full, with day-trippers and a couple of camper-vans. There was a little ice-cream van parked up just across from the car park on a wide grassy verge, with a couple of cars parked next to it, so I joined them.
From the ice cream van, I headed through a gate and onto a grassy path - part of the Pennine Way - which headed through some fields past some quite docile cattle, calves & Swaledale sheep. The ground on either side began to rise as I headed along the Pennine Way towards the dry valley of Watlowes.
The ground continued to rise on either side before closing in to a gully at the northern end of the valley.
Due to the composition of Limestone - it being soluble in rainwater - means there are no streams or becks in areas of limestone. The streams - over the course of thousands of years, have cut their way through the limestone until reaching a harder rock which they can then flow along - and this is how many of the caves in this corner of the Yorkshire Dales have been formed from melting glaciers in past ice ages. The same action is also what created the dry valleys between Malham Tarn & Malham Cove.
Originally the water would have flowed overground, eating away at the limestone into the valleys we can see today, before heading underground. The water now disappears into a 'watersink' a few hundred feet south of Malham tarn, reappearing from the rock again at the foot of Malham Cove just over a mile south.
The path headed along a terrace as the valley began to drop away to the left the circled around the flanks of Comb Hill at the head of the valley. On turning the corner, this was where the valley really opened up.
After crossing a wooden stile, it was then a rocky decent down steps to the valley floor, but from then on it was a pleasant, level walk which eventually came out on the top of Malham Cove.
This is where limestone country abruptly ends at the Middle Craven Faultline, with a sheer limestone cliff dropping some 230 feet down to the valley floor. The top of the cove, which was once a huge waterfall on the same scale as Niagara Falls in Canada, is characterised with a fantastic example of Limestone Pavement - one of the United Kingdom's rarest habitats. The bare Limestone has been weathered over thousands of years into flat, smooth blocks - known as clints - and the gaps inbetween - known as grikes.
If you think it looks familiar, it has been used as a location in various Film & TV shows - most notably, Harry Potter camped out on the top of the Cove in 2009's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. The sheer cliff face is also thought to have inspired J.R.R. Tolkien for his depiction of Helm's Deep in his Lord of the Rings novels.
I spent some time exploring the pavement, its various stepped levels, and intricate habitats that have formed within the grikes, which are a sheltered home to small alpine plants and ferns. Walking across the pavement is enjoyable in itself, making your way across the maze like top, skipping over some of the larger grikes, and having your heart skip a beat when one of the clints slightly rocks as your weight shifts across it. I found a spot overlooking Malham-dale below, and stopped for a quick bite to eat.
Curiously, in the December 2015, Malham Cove became Britain's highest single drop waterfall during the freak weather event of Storm Desmond. It was believed to have been the first time in over 200 years that water had flowed over the top of the cove.
The cliff face is popular with rock climbers, but is also a protected home to nesting Peregrine Falcons, as well as House Martins. During the spring & summer months, a viewing point is set up by National Park Rangers in a pasture at the bottom of the cove, to allow the public a glimpse into the Peregrine Falcon's world.
After lunch on the top, I headed east following the Dales High Way path by the side of a dry-stone wall towards Gordale. Where the path turned to enter open fields, I stayed alongside the wall before reaching a gate. Heading through the gate, the path began to climb onto New Close Knotts, which would give a birds eye view down into the Scar.
I'd walked into the bottom of Gordale Scar previously. It's vertical, canyon-like walls towering high above, & culminating in a pair of waterfalls at the claustrophobic head of the Scar. It is thought to have been a huge cavern, again carved by melt water in the last ice age, where the roof eventually collapsed to form the canyon. The only way out of the canyon to head north is by scrambling up the waterfalls to pick up the path back to Malham Tarn - a route I haven't yet convinced myself to do.
I paused on top of New Close Knotts, and whilst there spotted two Birds of Prey flying below. I'm not sure if they were Peregrine's or not (they seemed to be more of a red colour than the Peregrine grey, so I presume they were more likely to be Kestrel's), but I did come to the conclusion that they must be nesting in the canyon walls. It was only a brief sighting before the vanished into the cliffs below.
Continuing on, the path headed along the top of the Scar following an old, collapsed stone wall. At the head of the Scar, the path turned north west following above Gordale beck, before parting ways as the grassy path crossed a wide expanse. I decided to veer of the path slightly, as I spotted a slight rise to my right, and a short scramble up about five foot of limestone revealed a large area of limestone pavement.
Had I stuck to the path, I would have never even seen it! I explored the area for a short while before rejoining the path, which met up to follow yet another dry-stone wall, which, unexpectedly, had a minor road running along the opposite side.
The path came out at an area called Street Gate, which was on the eastern edge of a large open pastureland filled with sheep & cattle. This is also an ancient convergence of roads. As well of the minor road & the path I had walked along, there was also a stone track which headed east along an old Roman road - infact there are the remains of a roman encampment not too far east along this track - which I only discovered later on. I was only ¾ of a mile away from the Malham Tarn car park - but it was still early - not even 3:30pm yet, so I decided to head towards Malham Tarn & walk around it.
I followed a level stone track - an access road for the National Trust - which lead straight to the Tarn.
If you search in Google 'highest lake in England' - the result will be Malham Tarn. It lies 1,237 ft above sea-level, and is one of only eight upland alkaline lakes to be found in Europe.
Of course though, from my exploration in the Lake District, I have visited tarns at much higher altitudes. Sprinkling Tarn below Great End, for example, is 1,962 feet above sea-level, which is a lot higher than Malham Tarn. So I'm not too sure if the statistic takes into account the size or volume of the lake as well.
It was a pleasant flat walk along the track on the eastern side of the tarn, and I passed plenty of dog-walkers, and families with young children out for a stroll. The path reached a gate, which then entered woodland on the northern shoreline, heading away from the tarn.
I'm not sure if it is, but the woodland seemed like it would be a prime location for Red Squirrels - so I moved quietly & kept my eyes open.
A building appeared out of the woodland. This turned out to be a large Field Studies Centre (FSC), and the track turned into a tarmac road, which I continued along. On the opposite side of the FSC, the road headed through a narrow gorge, and on closer inspection it looked as though it had been carved out. The walls were a good 10 foot in height.
At the other end of the gorge the road headed back through woodland. Interestingly, there were a number of wood carvings dotted just off the road-side, and must have been for the FSC, as they were of various wildlife - from Owls, Rabbits, Fish & a Heron.
The road reached a small group of buildings with a footpath heading between them, away from the road but back towards the Tarn. I followed the path, which lead me onto Tarn Moss.
This is a SSSI (Site of Special Scientific Interest).
The path turned into a boardwalk to navigate over the fragile wetland ecosystem. There were information boards advising 'what you will see here today', including Roe Deer, Water voles, Exmoor Ponies (surprisingly) & a host of various plants.
Although, sadly, I didn't spot any of the mammals, I did spot a few common lizards basking on the boardwalk - quickly scuttling away as I approached, as well as quite a few butterflies. It was very humid crossing the Moss, especially the wooded areas, and was glad when I came to the end of the boardwalk, and was back on the terra-firma of the tarmac road.
As there is now direct shoreline path on the western side of the Tarn, I ended up following the road to a crossroads, and taking the left turning which took me back to the car park at Malham Tarn, where I treated myself to an ice cream to end the day.
As an interesting epilogue, on reaching the last crossroads on the way back to the car park, I heard a lot of bird chattering in the fields but couldn't see them. The noise was so loud that it was worrying the sheep into running into another field. All of a sudden a few birds took flight, and were joined by the rest of their flock until there was a massive wave of hundreds of birds flying quite low in the sky - seemingly out of nowhere from hiding in the grass!
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