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2026-08-265 min readThe North Yorkshire Destinations editorial team

Seven falls worth the boots and the parking fee, ordered from the four-and-a-half mile trail that beats everything else in England to the half-mile stroll anyone can manage.

1. The Ingleton Waterfalls Trail

No other single walk in the county packs in this much water. The trail is a circular route of roughly four and a half miles up the River Twiss and down the River Doe, taking in Pecca Falls, the 45-foot curtain of Thornton Force, Beezley Falls and Snow Falls, with boardwalks and stone steps through gorge woodland for much of it. Allow three hours at a comfortable pace and expect around 400 feet of ascent spread over plenty of steps. It is privately maintained, so there is an entry charge, generally in the low teens for adults.

Go after two days of rain and it is genuinely thunderous; go in a dry August and Thornton Force can thin to a trickle, which is the honest catch. The car park at Broadwood in Ingleton is the start, and it fills by ten on summer weekends. Wear proper footwear, because the polished limestone steps are slick even in dry weather, and do not attempt it with a pushchair. Confirm the current admission price and opening times with the trail operator, as both change from season to season.

2. Aysgarth Falls, Wensleydale

Three separate flights of the River Ure spread over about a mile of limestone shelves, and the only entry on this list where the best of it is available to people who cannot walk far. Upper Force is a few minutes from the National Park car park on level path; Middle and Lower Force need field paths and steps but no real climbing. Middle Force is where the quarterstaff fight in the 1991 Robin Hood film was shot, and it is still the most photographed water in Wensleydale, particularly when the Ure is running peat-brown after rain.

The whole circuit, including the woodland path and the return through Freeholders' Wood, is about two miles and takes an hour. Parking is pay and display at the National Park centre off the A684 between Aysgarth and Carperby, and the site has toilets and a café, which puts it ahead of everywhere else for a family stop. Combine it with Bolton Castle, six minutes' drive north, for a full day. Come at first light in autumn if you want the falls without a line of tripods along the viewing platform.

3. Janet's Foss and Gordale Scar from Malham

The best walk on the list rather than the best waterfall. From Malham village, an easy mile of streamside path through wild garlic and ash brings you to Janet's Foss, a mossy tufa curtain dropping into a plunge pool that gets used as a wild swimming spot in July. Carry on ten minutes and the ground opens into Gordale Scar, a collapsed cavern with vertical walls over 300 feet high and a waterfall bursting out of a hole in the rock partway up. The scale of the gorge is what stops people mid-sentence.

You can scramble up beside the fall to the top, but it is a genuine hands-on climb, greasy in the wet, and not a route for young children or anyone in trainers. The alternative is to return the way you came and loop back over the fields to Malham Cove, making a circuit of five miles with about 800 feet of ascent. Park in the National Park car park at Malham; the village lanes are hopeless on Saturdays. Add the Cove's limestone pavement and this becomes the single best day's walking in Craven.

4. Hardraw Force, Wensleydale

England's highest unbroken single drop above ground, at roughly 100 feet, and the only major waterfall in the country you reach by walking through a pub. Access is via the Green Dragon Inn at Hardraw, a mile and a half north of Hawes, with a modest admission paid at the bar and a gravel path of about 400 metres to the amphitheatre. The Victorian bandstand in the gorge still hosts brass band contests, and the acoustics in there are extraordinary. Total walking time is fifteen minutes each way, so this is a stop rather than an expedition.

Make it part of a Hawes morning: Wensleydale Creamery for cheese, the Dales Countryside Museum in the old station, then Hardraw. Keen walkers can arrive on foot from Hawes on the Pennine Way, a pleasant mile and a half across the fields. The catch is that the falls need water; in a dry spell the drop is a thin ribbon and the entry fee stings. Check with the inn for opening times and admission before you drive out, especially outside the main season or during private events.

5. Falling Foss, near Whitby

A 30-foot fall in deep beech woodland at Midge Hall, four miles inland from Whitby, and the pick of the coastal-hinterland walks. The short version is a ten-minute descent from the Falling Foss car park at May Beck or the small parking area nearer the tea garden. The better version is the three-mile loop up the beck and back through the Sneaton Forest tracks, including the Hermitage, a hollowed boulder carved in 1790. The tea garden beside the fall serves scones on outdoor tables and generally opens through the warmer months only.

Approach roads are single track with passing places and awkward for large vehicles, which is the main reason this stays quieter than the Dales falls even in August. Go on a bright day after rain and the light through the canopy over the water is the best photograph on the Whitby side of the county. Pair it with Robin Hood's Bay, twenty minutes away, or with Whitby Abbey. Verify the tea garden's opening season locally, as it does not run year-round and there is no other refreshment for miles.

6 and 7. Stainforth Force and Cotter Force

Sixth is Stainforth Force, a broad set of ledges on the Ribble a mile from Stainforth village near Settle, reached in ten minutes from the National Trust car park past a 17th-century packhorse bridge. Its trick is seasonal: in late autumn, usually October and November, salmon leap the steps on their way upriver, and on a good day you can stand on the rocks and watch fish launch themselves clear of the water. Outside that window it is a pretty picnic spot rather than a destination. Add Catrigg Force, a hidden 20-foot fall above the village, for a three-mile circuit.

Seventh, and first choice for anyone with a wheelchair, buggy or dodgy knees, is Cotter Force near Appersett, three miles west of Hawes off the A684. A surfaced, near-level path of about half a mile follows Cotterdale Beck to a series of low limestone steps in a quiet side valley. It takes twenty minutes return, parking is a small free layby, and you will often have it entirely to yourself. It is not dramatic, and it does not pretend to be; as an accessible waterfall in genuine Dales country it has no competition.

Timing, kit and what to skip

Waterfalls are a weather-dependent attraction, so plan them for the day after heavy rain rather than the day of it. Spring, roughly late March to May, is the sweet spot: high water from snowmelt and rain, wild garlic and bluebells in the gorge woods, and the visitor numbers of a normal weekday. High summer is the worst time in a dry year. Winter is superb after a thaw but paths near Ingleton and Gordale ice up badly. Waterproof boots with real tread, not walking sandals, are the minimum on all seven.

Skip Mallyan Spout at Goathland unless you have checked its condition locally first; the streamside path below it has a long history of rockfall and closures, and the 60-foot fall itself is a spindly one in dry weather. Skip any plan involving swimming beneath Gordale Scar, where the rock is loose. If you only have one day and want maximum water for minimum driving, do Aysgarth and Hardraw together, twenty minutes apart on the A684, and leave Ingleton for a full day of its own.

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