Discover some of the most enchanting falls in the Yorkshire Dales, pausing for lunch in the quaint market town of Hawes, suggests
Neil Coates
ong before there was Yorkshire, there was ice. For millennia, thick, endless sheets of it covered the area – now the Pennines – while active glacial tongues scoured away ancient river courses, remodelling the geomorphology of the land surface.
Wensleydale was at the heart of this chaos and today’s River Ure flows in an overdeepened, over-widened vale. Its myriad higher tributaries cut down through the geology to achieve parity with the main valley, redefined as the last glacier melted some 12,000 years ago.
The happy result is an abundance of falls, chutes and cataracts that together make Upper Wensleydale the epitome of Yorkshire’s beguiling waterfall country. And at its heart is delightful Hawes, a miniature town, major market centre and locus for countless rambles to magical falls amid the cocooning hills. The town is garlanded by precipitous scars, side valleys and wooded micro-dales, each one enlivened by the throaty voice of tumbling waters. Liquid tendrils writhe and plunge from the high moors and fells to boost the Ure’s flow as it surges over its own exquisite sets of falls, clustering at Aysgarth and Redmire further downstream.
COPIOUS CASCADES
To best appreciate the setting, variety and beauty of Wensleydale’s falls, the opportunity offered by Hawes is unsurpassed. Generally gentle, undemanding walks thread along paths, tracks and lanes from the town to reach widely differing foaming cascades. This satisfying, easy-going route is a ramble of two halves, encountering powerful secluded falls, village-centre cataracts and England’s highest single-drop spout, with Hawes’s pubs, tearooms and cafés a blissful halfway pivot.
BOLD BECK
From the broad, bustling main street, find the pleasant
Victorian Gothic church of St Margaret’s on its mound. At the rear of the churchyard, join the Pennine Way and amble up across pasture to skirt the substantial buildings of Wensleydale Creamery, home to Wallace and Gromit’s favoured delicacy, Wensleydale cheese. Save a visit for later in the day and turn up the road into the centre of nearby
Gayle hamlet.
From the bridge in the heart of this picturesque settlement you will see the first falls of the walk, a rake of natural limestone steps over which Gayle Beck rumbles and tumbles.
Immediately downstream is the eye-catching Gayle Mill, a sturdy Georgian cotton mill built around 1784, powered by water diverted along the leat from below the bridge.
It is currently undergoing structural renovation.
DALES AND FELLS
Take the narrow footpath heading upstream from the bridge (beck left, cottages right) and join the gently rising Gaits lane beyond. Just past the last cottage on the left, seek the path to the left, joining a well-worn field track towards the narrow, wooded dale cut by Gayle Beck. Views ahead are already striking, up secluded Sleddale to the great arc of moors and tops of Wether and Dodd Fells. Follow the beckside path upstream; in places it is a ledge along the steep valleyside, so tread carefully.
This part of the Dales is renowned for red squirrels.