Photos

This is a photograph of Malham Cove, in the Yorkshire Dales national park in Northern England.

The cove is a huge natural ampitheatre of sheer limestone cliffs - up to 300m wide and 80m in height. The cove was formed during previous ice ages, when the ice caps on the hills above melted, causing a huge waterfall which eroded back the rocks. Nowadays the valley above the cove is dry, as the small remaining rivers have found a way down through a series of undiscovered caverns within the limestone. The river Aire (the main river of Leeds) has its origins at the bottom of the cove, where it bubbles up from an underwater stream.

The famous limestone pavement (see here) can be found on the top of the cove.
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To get a better impression of scale, I've uploaded a workshop to show a close-up of some climbers who were on the face at the time - the area on the workshop is the upper "band" of rock between the dark lines in the above photo.


PP - resize, crop, sharpen.