The Norbers provide a memorable finale to a walk through landscape dramatically shaped by the action of water and ice on stone. Lying on the lower flanks of Ingleborough, this is classic Karst country, where the moors are pock-marked with pot holes and sinks, and the hillsides encrusted with the crinkled slabs of giant limestone pavements. Even in the so-called “dry combes”, formed millennia ago by melt water, the sound of rushing streams is never far from the surface, emanating from the mouths of caverns whose inner recesses form one of the most extensive cave systems in Europe. Generally speaking, to experience the text-book formations of Karst landscape involves long trudges across often featureless moorland, where it’s all too easy to become disorientated. Here, however, you get to see some of the defining features of this terrain – including a melt water ravine, limestone pavements, one of the dales’ most famous show caves and, of course, the extraordinary Norber Erratics – without venturing more than an hour from the nearest tearooms. Only a short section crosses pathless high ground – the section over Thwaite Scars – and this is laced with numerous sheep trails
[1] From the main road bridge over the beck in the centre of Clapham, walk up the east (right) side of the stream, along Church Ave.
(A) Clapham is a typical dales estate village. The Norman tower of its church hints at the settlement’s considerable age, although most of what you see today dates from the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when Clapham and its surrounding farms were directly managed by the local landowners, the Farrer family of Ingleborough Hall
Having passed the entrance to the national park car park, cross the footbridge immediately on your left, turning right on the far side up Riverside.
(B) It was the Farrers who originally dammed Clapdale Beck to form an ornamental lake – an early experiment in hydro-electricity. The outflow, which now gushes down a spectacular waterfall at the top of the village, used to drive a generator powering the hall and estate mills, as well as Clapham’s street lights. Exotic shrubs and trees carpet the woodland around the lake – the legacy of Reginald John Farrer (1880–1920), a renowned botanist who collected flora in China, Tibet and northern Burma. Born with a harelip that kept him out of school, he lived a solitary life as a boy, developing an interest in natural history by exploring the fells above his family’s estate. After a failed literary career, he would later introduce more than one hundred plants to Britain, but is most famous for an unconventional method of propagation: to plant seeds on less accessible cliffs he is said to have fired them from a shotgun.
Follow the road all way to the top, past the viewpoint over the falls.
The moorland above Clapdale is dominated by the stepped profile of Ingleborough (723m/2372ft). Although it was once believed to be the highest mountain in England, the loftiest of the “Three Peaks” is neither spectacular nor a compelling hill to climb. Its interest lies rather in its unusual atmosphere, particularly around the limestone zone of its lower flanks, whose unique geology was a prime inspiration for creating the Yorkshire Dales National Park in 1954.
The entrance to the Clapdale trail and Ingleborough Cave lies ahead of you.
(C) Having poured down Gaping Gill, the largest of all the potholes on Ingleborough, the water of Fell Beck flows through a seventeen kilometre labyrinth of subterranean passageways to re-emerge near the mouth of Ingleborough Cave in Clapdale, one of three show caves in the national park. Open to the public since 1837, it’s still a popular attraction, taking visitors down half a kilometre of chambers filled with stalagmites and stalactites.
Having paid the small admission fee at the meter, follow the Drive down to the lake, then northwards along the banks of the beck for 2km/1.25miles, through tree plantations and fields, past the entrance to Ingleborough Cave, and on to the point where the Drive bends left (north-west) into Trow Gill (worth continuing to visit).
(D) Most of the rainwater draining southeast off the hills does so underground. During the last Ice Age, however, it flowed largely through a series of ravines created by the melting ice. A fine example of one of these is Trow Gill – a miniature, ?25-metre-tall gorge fringed by stands of fir trees at the top of Clapdale. Only a short way off our circuit, it is one of the more memorable landmarks on the path up Ingleborough, which clambers up the piled rocks at the far end of the defile. It was here in 1947 that a couple of young cavers came across the decomposed remains of a man thought to have been a Nazi spy. A broken ampoule suggested he committed suicide by ingesting cyanide. This theory, however, has never been borne out by German intelligence records. The real identity of the Trow Gill skeleton remains a mystery.
The drystone wall on your right here makes a right-angle bend, shortly before the track passes through a gate (ignore the gate & signpost on the right prior to this gate). Go through the gate and turn right after the gate; keep to the wall as it makes an “S” bend, then continues up a steep slope to meet the head of Long Lane.
[2] Ignore the trails fanning left (north) from here, and instead follow the track east, roughly in the same direction you’ve been walking, as it winds uphill in parallel with the wall on your right. Swinging left (northeast) away from the wall, it then passes through a gate in another wall. Turn half right on its far side, heading for the gap in the rocks above, after which bear left slightly to continue uphill to reach a small hillock. Turn to your right and from here you will see a tangle of sheep trails crossing the hilltop and a number of cairns in the distance: head towards the highest ground, marked by a sharp cairn.
(E) Thwaite Scars is made up of fractured limestone outcrops and pavements of clints (blocks) and grykes (fissures). Walking up here in early summer, with the magnificent view of Crummack Dale unfolding to the east, you’ll find a wealth of plant life thriving amid the rocks, including wild thyme, early purple orchids, yellow rock rose and bird’s foot trefoil.
Having explored the limestone crest, improvise a route southeast , using the cairns as a guide,down the escarpment to a ladder stile next to a wall junction at SD766703
[3] Cross the stile and bear right down the slope to the margins of a field dotted with mysterious boulders
(F) These boulders are much darker in colour than the crags above. The otherworldly lumps are made of sandstone, dumped here by glaciers after being swept from the cliffs at the head of Crummack Dale. Known as the Norber Erratics, they rest on pedestals fifty or sixty centimetres thick. Protected from the corrosive effects of rainwater by the boulders
To leave the field and continue with the route, head for the drystone enclosure in the bottom L corner of the field at SD767696. A ladder stile here leads to a path that follows another wall downhill, then joins a farm track which eventually meets Thwaite Lane.
[4] Turn right onto Thwaite Lane and follow it west for 2.5km/1.5miles, with Robin Proctor’s Scar rising to your right, keeping left at the fork when the track arrives at a tree plantation.
You’re walking here on an ancient footpath originally carved out by the Cistercian monks of Fountain Abbey, who used it to travel to and from their landholdings in Cumbria. Just before entering the village, the lane passes through a pair of short tunnels drilled through the limestone to carry the old right of way under the grounds of Ingleborough Hall, the Farrers’ original seat. The Victorian mansion is nowadays run as an outdoor pursuits centre.
Continue down through the tunnel to reach the north side of Clapham, next to the church. Keep left of the beck, and follow Church Ave downhill to regain the car park and village centre.