Ingleborough National Nature Reserve

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Overview

Ingleborough is one of the famous Three Peaks of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Together with Pen-y-ghent and Whernside, and this limestone and gritstone NNR is renowned and protected for its special wildlife, flora, geology and spectacular scenery. Here you will find flower-rich meadows and pastures, heather-clad moors, ancient woodland and some of Britain’s finest limestone pavements, the fissured surface of ice-eroded naked rock, split into clints and grykes which provide delicate micro-climates for flowers and ferns. The dramatic limestone landscape of Ingleborough was created by the forces of nature and modified by the hand of Man. The limestone grasslands are full of colourful wild flowers in summer. Look out for early-purple orchid, wild thyme, rock rose, bird’s-foot trefoil, limestone bedstraw, harebell and small scabious. In contrast to the limestone grasslands, some parts of the reserve, like High Lot, are covered in thick deposits of peat. Bog mosses, heather, bilberry, purple moor-grass and bog asphodel are plants typical of these areas. You may hear a red grouse calling or see a short-eared owl hunting.

Location

Colt Park Barn, Chapel-le-Dale, Selside, LA6 3JF

About the area

North Yorkshire, with its two National Parks and two designated Areas of Outstanding Natural Beauty, is England’s largest county and one of the most rural. This is prime walking country, from the heather-clad heights of the North York Moors to the limestone country that is so typical of the Yorkshire Dales – a place of contrasts and discoveries, of history and legend.