Ribblesdale Geology Trail. Stainforth-Winskill section

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Ribblesdale Trails

This 5km (3 mile) circular walk starts in Stainforth and visitsWinskill Stones Local Nature Reserve and Catrigg Force at thehead of Stainforth Beck.

The light-grey rock that dominates this area is limestone which ismade up of the shells and skeletons of sea-living creatures whichchemically are calcium carbonate. The limestone was formed inwarm, shallow tropical seas when ‘Britain’ lay near the equator.Those creatures could only survive in clear water as they filteredsea-water to feed and breathe, and sand or mud would preventthis. Some limestone rock is lighter-coloured than otherlimestone: the darker rocks contain more mud or sand.

Start in the centre of Stainforth village. A short road startsopposite the Craven Heifer. At the end of this turn right andtake the signposted footpath, on the left, between the housesand over a wall stile into a field. Contour along below thefence until you come to a wooden gate in the fence and intothe wooded slopes below Stainforth Scar.

The path takes you up a flight of rough limestone steps. No oneknows how old these steps are though one old legend claims theywere built by the Giant of Winskill. Locally they are known as CatSteps. At the top a wall stile leads you onto open ground again,and the path goes through a series of small fields to LowWinskill farm. Walk through the farmyard and up the accesstrack to Upper Winskill and onto open ground once again.

Take the tarmac road from here that runs along the westernedge of Winskill Stones, past Samson’s Toe [2].

Samson’s Toe

This is an example of an erratic, a boulder that does not ‘belong’here. It is made of much older Silurian rock that was dragged herefrom Helwith Bridge by the last glacier and dumped as the icebegan to lose energy. You will see other smaller Silurian erratics onthe path from Winskill Stones to Catrigg Force. They are all a verydifferent colour from the limestone, and have bright green lichengrowing on them. Parts of Samson’s Toe have split off as frost actionopened up natural cracks in the rock. At Norber, north of Austwick,there are hundreds of erratics of all shapes and sizes that weremoved by the ice from the head of Crummack Dale.

Samson’s Toe glacial erratic near track to Upper WinskillPhotography by Dave Tayler

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Carry on to the junction with the Langcliffe-Malham Tarn road.

Winskill Stones

The road runs through a narrow dry valley with limestone scarson each side. With close examination of the rock you will seesome fossils close to the Winskill cattle grid. Brachiopods looklike modern clams with two thick shells made of calciumcarbonate, hinged together to protect a simple, soft-bodied

animal inside. Originally the outer surfaces of the shells hadspines on them to anchor the creatures to the sea bed. If youlook carefully, you will see small knobs on the shells – these werethe attachment points for the spines. Often only single shellshave survived as strong water currents broke the hinges andforced the two halves apart. You can also see fan-shaped coralsand crinoids. Crinoids are thin white pipes that look like plantstems but were animals similar to a modern sea urchin. Thepipes are the fossilised arms or stems of these creatures.

The dry valley is a meltwater channel. As the last upland glacierswere finally melting away, huge flows of water ran in alldirections down into the valleys carving valleys and gorges. Thisis a small one but some are dramatic in size, like Gordale Scar atMalham or Trowgill at Clapham.

Turn left along the road through the shallow gorge, past thewell-preserved lime kiln [4] until you reach a cattle grid where abroad track heads westwards from the road past the remainsof the bowl of another lime kiln set in a deep rock cutting.

Lime kilns

Alongside the road is a well-preserved lime kiln. It was probablybuilt in the late eighteenth century and was used for firing, orcalcining, limestone quarried from the scar behind the kiln toproduce burnt lime. Stone and coal were loaded into the bowl fromthe kiln top (the bowl has since been filled in) and burnt lime, calledquicklime, was drawn out from an opening at the rear of the archedchamber below. Most of the lime was spread on local pastures to‘sweeten’ the grass to improve the quality of the sheep and cattle.

Archaeology

Winskill Stones Reserve has many archaeological features in theform of low stone banks or wall lines that formed enclosures forlivestock management. Some are small, tucked into lowlimestone outcrops, while others are larger and more complex.They probably date from the period before Roman occupation. Aclear rectangular structure – the remains of a building – can beseen next to the ruined lime kiln on the track you will befollowing, with a small enclosure under the low scar opposite thekiln [5]. None of the features has been excavated. To the left ofthe track are the shattered remains of a limestone pavement [6].

Limestone pavement

Above the scars much of Winskill Stones consists of areas oflimestone pavement, formed on Gordale Limestone, some of

which has a very thin covering of soil and vegetation. North of theroad much of the pavement was stripped in the past and sold asgarden rockery stone. Huge areas of bare limestone pavement canbe seen around Ingleborough, at the head of Crummack Dale, onMoughton above Helwith Bridge and on the western side ofIngleborough.

Follow the track through two field gates and drop downhill tothe top of the walled Goat Scar Lane. A small gate on the righthere gives access to Catrigg Force [7].

Catrigg Force

In wet weather Catrigg Force is an impressive cascade of waterpouring 12m into the gorge below. So dramatic are the falls thatwhen water in Cowside Beck goes over the top it emerges at thebottom with a different name – Stainforth Beck.

Gorges like this are formed over very long periods of time as theerosive power of falling water and stones carried along in it grindand pound away at the base of the falls, slowly pushing the fallsupstream. If a stream flows where rocks have been weakened by

Dry valley at Winskill StonesPhotography by Steve Finch

Lime kiln at Winskill StonesPhotography by Steve Finch

Cattrigg ForcePhotography by Steve Finch

Samson’s Toe glacial erratic at sunsetPhotography by Steve Finch

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faulting, these processes have a greater impact. The NorthCraven Fault runs more or less east-west through Catrigg.

After visiting the falls, return to the gate and walk down GoatScar Lane back to Stainforth.

A Detour to Stainforth Force

From the village centre walk over the bridge acrossStainforth Beck and follow the road as it turns to the left tothe car park and toilets. Go through the car park, under themain road, and along the Pennine Bridleway which crossesover the Settle-Carlisle Railway to join the narrow tarmacroad that drops steeply down Dog Hill Brow. At the bottomthe road crosses the seventeenth-century packhorsebridge spanning the Ribble and a stile in the wall givesaccess to the footpath along the river bank to the falls [8].

The light grey rock that forms the face of the falls, and the darkerrock under the bridge, are both limestone.

Fossils occurring at the Force are amongst the oldest to be seenin the Settle area. One rare and striking fossil, called ‘Michelinia’,can be seen in the limestone at the Force. This is called a colonialcoral because it was composed of many individual soft-bodiedcreatures living tightly together, often in a fan-shape: eachcreature sat at the end of a tube of calcium carbonate, known asa corallite. Only the hard tubes remain. A good example ofMichelinia can be seen on a surface on the west side of the riverjust above the falls. It looks rather like the back of a tortoise asthe top of the coral has been exposed by water erosion so thecorallites are now seen in cross-section.

Visitors might also enjoy the interpretative trail around theimpressive remains of the Hoffmann lime kiln at the CravenLime works.

Text courtesy of Adrian Kidd, David Johnson & Marion Dunn. Geological figures courtesy of Adrian Kidd

© Crown copyright. All rights reserved North Yorkshire County Council100017946 2011

Derived from 1:50,000 scale BGS Digital Data under Licence 2009/073 BritishGeological Survey. ©NERC

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Stainforth Force and Packhorse BridgePhotography by Tony Dilger

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The Ribblesdale Trails area has a unique character, but have youever thought why? Much of it results from the rocks beneath yourfeet, the effects of ice and the way human activities haveinfluenced the land since the ice melted. Millions of years of Earthhistory have culminated in the landscape, plants, animals, landuse and buildings that make the area so attractive.

Ancient roots

Nearly half a billion years old, the ancient roots of the Dales areseen in the quarries at Helwith Bridge. These grey slates andsandstones began life as muddy and sandy submarine flows in adeep ocean basin. There, for almost 80 million years, they wereburied under layers of sediment, uplifted into mountains,squeezed, folded and altered.

Tropical desert

Under arid conditions, weathering and erosion then wore therocks flat before they were swamped by the tropical seas of theCarboniferous period.

Tropical seas

The tropical seas deposited horizontal beds of Carboniferouslimestone on the eroded, steeply dipping older rocks producing aspectacular unconformity. Shelly limestones packed with fossilsprove that around 350 to 335 million years ago the area was areef-edged lagoon in a tropical sea.

Tropical swamps and deltas

The tropical paradise did not last. By 330 million years ago mud andsand periodically washed into the tropical sea from river deltas. Acyclic repetition of events formed limestones, mudstones,sandstones and coals. As time progressed, the influence of the riverdeltas became greater and thick sandstones and mudstones werelaid down. The rocks that remain have been faulted, folded andinjected with mineral veins. Many deposits have been eroded away,taking with them clues to the events that formed them - nearly 300million years of rock history are now missing.

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Geological History Part 1

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