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One mile east of Malham, through a gap in the dry stone walls and along a limestone valley that narrows progressively as you walk, Gordale Scar announces itself with the sound of water before you see it.
The scar is a gorge cut through the limestone by the River Gordale, now reduced to a waterfall but formerly, in the immediate post-glacial period, a river of significant power. The walls of the gorge rise on both sides to heights of 100 metres or more, overhung in places so that the gorge is narrower at the top than at the floor. Standing at the base of the main waterfall, looking up through the vertical walls to the thin strip of sky above, is one of the most enclosed and dramatic natural experiences available in England.
Gordale Scar has attracted visitors since the Romantic period. Thomas Gray came in 1769 and wrote that he "staid there (not without shuddering) a full quarter of an hour, and thought my trouble richly rewarded." James Ward's painting of 1812 — showing the scar at enormous scale with cattle in the foreground — is now in the Tate collection and is one of the canonical images of the Romantic sublime in English art.
The painter William Turner visited in 1816. Wordsworth wrote a sonnet about it. John Keats found it less disturbing than Gray had, describing it more positively in a letter of 1818.
The Romantic fascination with Gordale Scar was specifically about what it represented: the overwhelming, the terrifying, the vertiginous. This is the sublime in its most literal application — a landscape so overpowering that it produces a complex emotional response combining fear and awe.
The main waterfall at the head of the gorge requires a short scramble over wet limestone to pass. In dry conditions, with appropriate footwear, this is straightforward — a matter of a few moves on good holds. In wet conditions it becomes slippery and requires more care. Most visitors scramble up to see the upper gorge and return the same way.
Above the waterfall, the gorge opens into a wider valley leading eventually back to Malham Tarn. A full circuit from Malham village — cove, gorge, tarn — is approximately six miles with modest ascent.
Malham Cove and Gordale Scar are almost always visited together — they are a mile apart and the combination gives you the two defining features of the Malham limestone landscape in a single half-day walk. The contrast between the open amphitheatre of the cove and the enclosed drama of the scar is itself instructive: two formations produced by the same geology in adjacent valleys but producing entirely different aesthetic experiences.
Malham and Gordale Scar can be included in a bespoke Yorkshire Dales tour.