The Yorkshire Dales Dark Sky Reserve: Malham, Pen-y-ghent and Ribblehead

The Yorkshire Dales National Park, designated in 1954 and extended in 2016, became an International Dark Sky Reserve in 2020, for its low light pollution and good conditions for astronomy — over a landscape of limestone scars, pavements and potholes and very few towns. Malham Cove was made by an Ice Age waterfall 80 metres high, with a large limestone pavement above it; Pen-y-ghent, at 694 metres, is the lowest of Yorkshire's Three Peaks; the Ribblehead Viaduct carries the Settle–Carlisle line on 24 arches, its last stone laid at the end of 1874; and Gaping Gill on the slopes of Ingleborough is a 98-metre pothole into one of the largest known underground chambers in Britain.