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Saunterings: Walking in North-West England
Saunterings is a set of reflections based upon walks around the counties of Cumbria, Lancashire and
North Yorkshire in North-West England
(as defined in the Preamble).
Here is a list of all Saunterings so far.
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243. The Ingleton Waterfalls Rip-Off
We are lucky to have a bus passing through our village to whisk us to the Yorkshire Dales,
as far as Skipton, sometimes. Well, it doesn’t exactly whisk us there, since it stops
everywhere it can, but that’s ok if we’re not in a hurry and don’t feel walking fit enough
to justify a longish drive for a shortish walk.
And so we found ourselves in Ingleton on what was forecast to be the warmest day
of the year so far. Where should we walk? The obvious short walk from Ingleton is
the renowned Ingleton Waterfalls Trail, about which Wainwright (1970) wrote:
“Surely, of its kind, this is the most delightful walk in the country? And
not only delightful: it is interesting and exciting and captivating and, in places, awesome.
Here Nature, always bountiful, has been lavish indeed: charming rivers, sparkling waterfalls,
wooded ravines, sinister pools and gorges all combine to present a pageant of unexcelled
beauty and grandeur … The walk lies over private land, and a charge (1/-) is made for admission.
So small a fee! So great a reward!”
For the benefit of younger, but perhaps not young, readers, 1/- is one shilling or 5p. I agree
with every word of Wainwright – or I would if it were still 1970. 1970’s 5p is equivalent,
after inflation, to about £1 today. The actual admission fee in 2026 is £11 (per adult,
£5.50 per child). I don’t
see any point in beating about the bush here: £11 is a rip-off. After all, the waterfalls
and gorges are nature’s work not that of the landowner.
Still, the car park is free – which is little consolation to those who've come by bus.
By paying this £11 you are not supporting a good cause – a wildlife group,
the National Trust, or the local council, say – but a private company, the Ingleton
Scenery Company Ltd, based in Skipton.
It is all a great shame. What could indeed be one of the best walks in the country
is spoiled by the feeling that you are being exploited. This is not just my reaction.
In TripAdvisor almost every review mentions the fee. The fee is clearly a factor on every
visitor’s mind. Some reviewers agree that the fee is a rip-off but others are determined
not to admit that they have been ripped-off and consider the walk worth every penny.
(But perhaps it's all a clever scheme to deter
visitors, since the narrow paths are over-crowded at peak periods. If so, the fee should be even higher!)
The walk was opened in 1885 and in the early years visitors were charged separately
for the two glens. So they paid to enter one glen and then, to their surprise, had to pay
again to get out of the other glen. Some returned home to put up notices saying “don’t go
to Ingleton unless you want to be robbed”. Nowadays visitors write on TripAdvisor (or
in a blog) that this is a rip-off.
Of course, I can hardly complain about a rip-off when we went there knowing that it would be.
We just wanted to walk the trail one last time. However, I am not inclined to add any words to
Wainwright’s, so here are a few photos, with
a comment below.
Swilla Glen
Left: Pecca Falls; Right: Thornton Force.
The ice-cream van on Twisleton Lane
Left: Beezley Falls; Right: Baxenghyll Gorge.
Snow Falls
On reflection, I don’t agree with every word of Wainwright. He was excessively flattering.
The walk is not that special. The list of 100 ‘favourite walks’ in England mentioned in
[5] has the Ingleton Waterfalls walk at number 36 (and number 10 in
north-west England), which seems about right to me. I doubt that any of the other 99
charge £11, or any pounds at all.
On this occasion, the highlight of the walk for me was the ice-cream from the
van that seems always to be on the Twisleton Lane track. This is a public footpath.
Also, the best waterfalls (Thornton Force and Pecca Falls) are on open access land, as
is some of the return glen – and so free to all.
The Trail's
leaflet says that it is a 4½ mile walk. It doesn’t say that the better half of it is not on
private land but you’re being charged £11 to walk on it anyway.
I am not sure whether to add this paragraph. Perhaps I should just soldier
on as best I can – or perhaps I should provide some context for the evolving nature
of these Saunterings. The fact is that I found this walk, short though it is
(but strenuous, not a parkland amble), very
tiring. There are several possible reasons for this – I was tired before I even
started the walk, because of a lack of sleep, for some reason – I was feeling a little
queasy too, perhaps the after-effect of a lingering cough – perhaps my body had not
adjusted to the sudden outbreak of summer – perhaps, after I hurt by back two years ago,
I have adapted to take extra care with every up-and-down step (and there
are a lot of them on the Waterfalls Trail) – perhaps, after decades of running and
walking, my reserves of energy have been depleted.
The leaflet says that the walk should take 2½ to 4 hours. It took us nearly 4 (including the
ice-cream stop and from and to the bus-stop). To do it in 2½ hours you'd have to not pause much, which rather
defeats the point of the walk.
We managed to raise the
tempo a little for the last part of the trail to make sure we caught the bus.
Date: March 19th 2026
Start: SD694730, Ingleton Information Centre bus stop (Map: OL2)
Route: from the bus stop to the start of the trail in
Swilla Glen – around the trail
– from the end of the trail in Twisleton Glen to the bus stop
Distance: 5 miles; Ascent: about 300 metres (including the up steps)
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© John Self, 2018-
Top photo: Rainbow over Kisdon in Swaledale;
Bottom photo: Ullswater