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The great split is S-shaped in plan, so that when we advance into its yawning mouth we are surrounded by limestone cliffs more than 300 feet high. If one visits Gordale Scar for the first time alone on a gloomy evening, as I have done, I can promise the most thrilling sensations to those who have yet to see this astonishing sight.
I stared with apprehension at one rock that would not only kill, but completely bury, anyone upon whom it fell, and I thought those old writers had underrated the horrors of the place. Wordsworth writes of "Gordale chasm, terrific as the lair Where the young lions couch," and he also describes it as one of the grandest objects in nature.
A further result of the Craven fault that produced Gordale Scar can be seen at Malham Cove, about a mile away. There the cliff forms a curved front 285 feet high, facing the open meadows down below.
It is a charming spot, even in the gloom of a wintry afternoon. The houses look on to a strip of uneven green, cut in two, lengthways, by the Aire. We go across the clear and sparkling waters by a rough stone footbridge, and, making our way past a farm, find ourselves in a few minutes at Gordale Bridge.
On the fire the porridge was warming for the calves' supper, while suspended from the wooden ceiling was the "bread-flake," a hurdle-shaped structure across the bars of which hung the pieces of oatcake which were eaten with buttermilk at supper. "Well, I've happen telled you afore," Grannie began, "that when I were a lile lass I lived up Malham way. My father had a farm close agen Gordale Scar.
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