Aysgarth Falls

Aysgarth Falls are three stepped cascades on the River Ure in Upper Wensleydale, and the Yorkshire Dales National Park Authority says they have been a tourist attraction for over 200 years. Wordsworth and his sister Dorothy visited while their coach horses were changed, Turner sketched them on a tour of the north, and the authority adds that they provided a setting for a scene in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. The authority’s audio guide explains the steps as alternate layers of hard limestone and soft shale, with the Ure wearing away the shale, and points out the river’s brown tinge, which it attributes to peat carried down from upland bogs in Wensleydale.

The falls are reached on the A684 from Leyburn towards Hawes, turning at the signpost for Aysgarth Falls, and the walk starts from the authority’s pay-and-display car park and visitor centre, which has four blue badge bays. The authority’s Access Hub describes the Upper and Middle Falls as fully accessible, with a firm, wide path from the car park to the Middle Falls and a viewing platform there for wheelchair users; the audio guide calls the Middle Falls the most dramatic of the three because it has the highest steps. The Lower Falls are different: the only way down is a flight of seventy steps, so they are not wheelchair accessible. The visitor centre also hires out two all-terrain wheelchairs, called trampers, to be booked ahead through Access to the Dales, and the authority owns Freeholders’ Wood, the local nature reserve alongside the falls, where its audio guide asks for dogs to be kept on a lead on the longer paths.

The Access Hub gives its Miles without Stiles route from the visitor centre as 1.5km. The authority says the falls are at their most dramatic after heavy rain, and its audio guide records that they have dried up in drought while usually holding some water all year. The viewpoint suits anyone who wants a waterfall without a hill, including wheelchair and tramper users for the upper two falls, and families who want a café behind the visitor centre. The Lower Falls stair rules out anyone who cannot manage seventy steps, and a walker who came for a summit will find none: for a hill day from Hawes, take Great Shunner Fell, or for a second waterfall in the dale, Hardraw Force.