CHAPTER 8: The Greta Headwaters

not been distorted much from their horizontal layers.
Below the 250m contour are the much older Silurian
slates and grits, which have been folded and contorted.
And the whole has been much shaped by glacial action.
Some of the western slopes of Ingleborough and
Simon Fell form a National Nature Reserve, although at
the moment it is more a matter of reversing nature than
of reserving it. Previously the land had been fertilised
and over-grazed, preventing the growth of wildflowers
and trees. The moorland areas are now being managed
to restore lost acid-loving plants such as ling heather
and bilberry, to join plants such as bog asphodel and
purple moor-grass. The grazing regime on the limestone
grasslands is intended to enable the flowering of
different plants through the seasons: purple wild thyme,
orchids, yellow rockrose, harebell, and so on. Within the
grikes many woodland plants flourish but now trees and
shrubs (ash, elm, hawthorn, hazel, sycamore) also have
a chance to thrive. This process has been supported by
the Dales-wide Limestone Country Project, which was
partly funded by the EU and ran from 2003 to 2008.
The aim was to improve biodiversity by moving from
sheep-intensive farming towards mixed farming using
hardy upland cattle breeds, such as the Blue Grey and
Highland cattle that may be seen at High Howeth on the
western slopes of Ingleborough.
To the north, Scar Close has been protected for
longer and gives an idea of the clint-and-grike flora
before wood clearance and over-grazing. Ash, hazel and
rowan trees have become established. Further north, the
raised terrace of Howrake Rocks has formed a prominent
rectangle of woodland, showing how different the
Ingleborough top (with no people!)
The River Greta (Chapel Beck) ... 131
Yorkshire Dales would look if left to revert to its natural
state.
Above the limestone terraces, there is a line of caves
and potholes where becks running off the fells disappear
underground. Great Douk Cave and Middle Washfold
Caves are popular with novice cavers. Braithwaite Wife
Hole (which Thos Johnson and Harry Speight, in their 19 th
century guides, rendered more intriguingly as Barefoot
Wives Hole) is a huge shakehole, 60m in diameter.
Raven Scar Cave, only discovered in 1971, was found to
be a Neolithic burial site. Meregill Hole is 170m deep,
with the mere that gives the pot its name visible 12m
down – or so they say. The sound of a waterfall below,
when the beck above was dry, was enough for me.
There is a line of springs, particularly clearly seen
after rain, in the green fields below Twisleton Scars,
where the limestone meets the impermeable lower layer.
Below God’s Bridge, several resurgences can be seen
entering Chapel Beck – or in summer creating Chapel
Beck, for then the bed is dry above the bridge. God’s
Bridge, incidentally, is traditionally a name that denotes
a natural, as opposed to man-made or devil-made, bridge
but here it has been sacrilegiously cemented over.
Chapel Beck runs below Oddie’s Lane, which is
along the line of a Roman road that ran from Bainbridge
to near Ingleton and then probably to join the road at
Over Burrow. On the east bank is the site of the disused
Ingleton Granite Quarry. It is, in fact, not granite at all
but greywacke, an impure sandstone with a toughness
that made it a valued stone for roads.
As Chapel Beck flows gently south-east, on the left
a building comes into view that delivers exactly what
This is Chapter 8 of The Land of the Lune (2nd edition), http://www.drakkar.co.uk/landofthelune.html, Copyright © 2010 John Self