The 7 best waterfalls in North Yorkshire
Wide limestone waterfall stepping over ledges in a wooded Yorkshire Dales gorge
Seven falls ranked on drama per mile walked, from a 100-foot single drop behind a Wensleydale pub to a 4.3-mile paid trail that strings four cascades together.
1. Ingleton Waterfalls Trail
No other single walk in the county delivers this many waterfalls. The 4.3-mile circuit, laid out as a paying attraction back in 1885 and still privately run, follows the River Twiss up past Pecca Falls to the broad curtain of Thornton Force, crosses the fields at Twisleton and drops back down the Doe past Beezley Falls and Snow Falls. Allow three hours at a walking pace, longer with children. Adult admission is around £10-12 with a separate car parking charge; check the trail's own site, since it closes in severe weather.
Thornton Force is the money shot: a 46-foot drop over a lip of limestone with the unconformity of much older slate visible beneath, a geology lesson that school groups have been dragged to for a century. The catch is the surface. Hundreds of stone steps, slick after rain, and no shortcut once you are committed past Pecca. Wear boots, not trainers, and skip it entirely if anyone in the party struggles with stairs. Go early on a summer weekend; the car park at Broadwood fills before ten and the paths bottleneck at the narrow gorge sections.
2. Hardraw Force, near Hawes
England's highest unbroken single-drop waterfall above ground, about 100 feet of water falling clear of the lip into a natural amphitheatre of gritstone. The oddity is the access: you walk in through the Green Dragon Inn at Hardraw, pay a few pounds at the bar, and follow the beck about 500 metres to the fall. That makes it the least strenuous serious waterfall in North Yorkshire and the only one where a pint is genuinely part of the itinerary. Entry fees and opening hours are set by the pub, so confirm before making a special journey.
Go after two days of rain and it thunders. Go in a dry August and it is a thin ribbon, which is the honest catch with a beck-fed fall on a small catchment. The amphitheatre has extraordinary acoustics and has hosted brass band contests since the nineteenth century. Combine it with Hawes, a mile and a half away, where the Wensleydale Creamery and the Dales Countryside Museum fill an afternoon. If you are choosing one Wensleydale waterfall and you dislike long walks, this is the one to pick over Aysgarth.
3. Aysgarth Falls
Three separate flights on the River Ure over about a mile, set in oak woodland five miles west of Leyburn. The Upper Force is the closest to the road and the most photographed; the Middle Force, reached by a wooded path from the national park centre, is the one that appeared in the 1991 Robin Hood film; the Lower Force involves the longest walk and rewards it with the widest spread of water. A full circuit is around two miles on good paths with some steps, taking about an hour and a half at an easy pace.
Aysgarth ranks third because it is beautiful rather than vertical: these are broad limestone staircases, not plunges. That makes it the best choice for a mixed-ability group, and the national park centre has toilets, a café and a pay-and-display car park charged by the hour, plus overflow parking that fills on bank holidays. St Andrew's church, the coffin route path and the freshwater trout in the pools are worth the extra twenty minutes. In spate after snowmelt in March, the Middle Force is the loudest water in Wensleydale. Book nothing, just go early.
4. Gordale Scar and Janet's Foss, Malham
A two-for-one on the same short walk out of Malham village. Janet's Foss is a modest but perfect tufa-screened drop into a plunge pool in ash woodland, half a mile from the National Trust car park at Malham along a flat, family-friendly path. Continue ten minutes up the lane and Gordale Scar opens as a 300-foot ravine with a waterfall pouring through a hole in the rock partway up. The out-and-back from the village is about two and a half miles and takes an hour and a quarter.
The catch at Gordale is the scramble. Climbing beside the lower fall to reach the upper gorge is a genuine hands-on rock move, greasy when wet, and people get stuck on it every summer. You lose nothing by standing at the base and turning round. Malham gets heavy visitor pressure between May and September, so use the National Park car park and expect a charge, or arrive before nine. Do this as a half-day with Malham Cove and you have covered the best limestone scenery in England without driving between sites.
5. Mallyan Spout, Goathland
The tallest fall in the North York Moors at about 70 feet, dropping down a mossy cliff into West Beck below the village of Goathland. The path leaves from beside the Mallyan Spout Hotel and descends steeply to the beck, then follows the water upstream over rock and root. It is under a mile each way but consistently the most awkward footing on this list, and sections have been closed after landslips more than once, so check with the North York Moors National Park before setting off.
It is fifth rather than higher because the approach can be miserable in the wet and the fall itself is a shy, sideways trickle in dry spells. What lifts it is the setting: Goathland is the Heartbeat village and the Harry Potter Hogsmeade station, so you can pair the waterfall with the North Yorkshire Moors Railway and a walk on the Roman road at Wheeldale. Park in the village pay-and-display, not on the verges where sheep wander freely. Skip it in flip-flops or after heavy rain, and go to Falling Foss instead.
6. Falling Foss, Sneaton Forest near Whitby
A 30-foot fall in deep woodland about six miles south of Whitby, and the easiest genuine waterfall on the eastern side of the county. Park at Midge Hall or the forestry car park nearby and it is a five-minute walk; extend it into a three-mile loop through May Beck and the Hermitage, a cave-like shelter carved from a single boulder in 1790. The tea garden beside the fall opens seasonally, roughly Easter to autumn and in fine weather only, so do not plan lunch around it without checking.
This is the pick for anyone based on the coast who does not want to drive an hour inland to the Dales. The forest tracks are shaded, which matters on the handful of genuinely hot days the North Yorkshire coast gets, and the beck pools are shallow enough for paddling. The catch is the access road: single-track lanes with passing places off the B1416, awkward when a caravan is coming the other way. Combine it with Robin Hood's Bay for a full day and you have the best inland-and-coast pairing in the district.
7. West Burton Falls, and the ones just off the list
Cauldron Falls at West Burton is a wide, elegant drop at the bottom of one of the prettiest greens in Wensleydale, five minutes from the car on a flat path, painted by Turner and generally uncrowded because the coaches go to Aysgarth two miles away. It earns seventh on scale, not charm, and it is the fall to pick when the weather is poor and you want ten minutes rather than three hours. There is limited roadside parking around the green; leave the bigger car and walk in from the village.
Three more deserve naming. Cotter Force, west of Hawes off the A684, has a firm, near-level path of a few hundred metres and is the best choice for wheelchairs and pushchairs. Catrigg Force above Stainforth near Settle is a hidden 60-foot chute reached by a steep walled lane. Scaleber Force, a mile up the road out of Settle towards Kirkby Malham, is a 40-foot drop yards from the verge. All three run hard in winter and thin in a dry summer, and none has facilities of any kind.
Before you book
What people ask before booking York.
Hardraw Force, because the 100-foot single drop is transformed by volume and the walk in from the Green Dragon Inn stays easy underfoot. Aysgarth Falls in spate is also spectacular and safe from wide viewing platforms. Avoid Gordale Scar and Mallyan Spout, where the rock scrambles become genuinely dangerous.
Two. The Ingleton Waterfalls Trail charges admission of roughly £10-12 per adult plus parking, and Hardraw Force charges a few pounds paid at the Green Dragon Inn. Everything else is free to enter, though car parks at Aysgarth, Malham and Goathland are pay-and-display. Check current prices with each operator.
People do swim in the plunge pools at Janet's Foss and the Ure at Aysgarth, but neither is a supervised swimming spot, the water rarely exceeds about 15C in summer, and levels rise fast after rain upstream. Never enter the water below Gordale Scar or Thornton Force.
