Ingleton Waterfalls Trail — Attraction in Thornton in Lonsdale

This is a 3.9 star review 🌟

What a great trail, spoiled by a minority. Read on for the details.

The Ingleton waterfall trail is beautiful, wonderful place and a great walk to take. I would of scored this higher if it hadn't of been for a few things.

The location, situated in the Yorkshire dales is beautiful and perfect if you lime outdoor spaces.

The site has parking that is manned and we'll mai trained. Entrance price was £10 per adult and £5 per child at point of publishing this review. Card only payments unfortunately.

The trail is advised to take between 2 to 4 hours. We took our 7 year old daughter And stopped to take photos at certain point ts as well as a lite break half Way to have a sandwich we had brought and it took us about 3.5 hours to complete the walk. I can imagine it could take a few extra hours if your children are no use to walking or want to rest more often.

The trail and water fall is a lovely walk especially if the weather is good. We went on a dry Thursday afternoon. It was faiy quite but I can imagine it would be bust on weekend if the weather is good. The trail is not suitable for pushchairs, prams or wheelchairs. It is suitable for young children that can walk a good distance and are stable on their feet. The trail has u even surfaces, rockey surfaces, wet and muddy In some places and steps of varying height. If you are not able to lift your knees above 90 degrees or are unstable on your feet I would not recommend this walk.

On the day we went an ice cream an was serving ice cream and ice lollies (they accepted cash and card) and just after half way point of the walk their is a rest/picnic area with a hut selling hot and cold drinks, sandwiches and bacon rolls etc.

The second part of the trail is generally down hill.

All in all this is a great place to walk, a fun day out for the kids that like the out doors and beautiful opportunity to see these natural waterfalls and water bodies.

The only dissopointing thigs about the trail were a minority of people spoiling it for others. The site allows dogs but they must be kept on leads however at one 9f the waterfalls their is a pool where people were swimming l, resting and sitting around. It was a beautiful spot but a number of peow had allowed their dogs of the lead to run around d and swim In and around the water. Some were big dogs and barked a lot. This is not good bear little children and made some children scared. Even worse a minority of disgusting dog owners had dumped their poo bags randomly around the site despite bins being available. Picking up your dogs poo and singing it in another palace does not mean you have cleaned up after your dog. It is disgusting, it spoils it for the public and for the dog owners that do clean up properly. The only solution to this as no enforcement is in place is to ban all dogs from the walk.

The other issue I came across is that the benches in the eating area at the cafe hut did not have any no smoking signs on so it was a perfect spot for people to smoke while your children...

I'm a bit conflicted about this place.

Do I like it? Yes.

Is it a nice walk? Yes.

Is it worth the price of admission? Probably not, or depending on when you go at least.

It is genuinely a nice place to visit. The walk isn't too tough but can be quite taxing with all the ups and down steps. There are plenty of beautiful spots to stop and have a picnic and or have a minute before continuing your walk.

The waterfalls are of course stunning.

But. We went on a busy Sunday afternoon, the views where somewhat beaten down by the sheer amount of people there and you feel rushed to move on from the best spots by the people behind you. The most impressive waterfall had kids climbing all over it, people in the pools underneath and dogs all running round off their leads despite the signs asking that they remain on leads.

Towards the end of the walk there is a gate / door you have to pass through that is guarded by a keypad so anyone walking the other way can't get through, which is when I realised that they where pretty aggressive about making people pay to walk in nature.

Not long after this we stopped to finish off our flasks. I started to count the amount of people walking past. At £10 a head for adults and £5 for kids, it was quite the haul they'd managed to get in the amount of time it took to drink a brew.

I realise they don't make that kind of money on a rainy Wednesday in December, but still.

Ingleton is a beautiful part of the country and there are many just as impressive walks to be had for free.

The walk itself doesn't seem that particularly well maintained, sure there are bridges and handrails which I'm sure all need checking and work on them from time to time but I'm also pretty sure they don't need to be there other than to offer a 'safer' walk

To me, it would be much fairer to charge per car, or charge for parking instead. Or, at the very least at peak times stagger the walkers so they aren't all tripping over each other and can enjoy the views on offer.

I don't wish to sound down on the place, it just irked me a little and then the more I thought about it...

The walk itself is also described as Circular, which it isn't really. It actually ends in Ingleton Village Centre. You're encouraged by signs to visit the local shops, which I'd also encourage as their are some good local offerings - The whole village is an excellent place to visit for the day or a week.

But it's not a circular walk, other than you have to walk through the village to get back to the Waterfall Trail Entrance where you parked your car. By that definition most walks where you start and end at the same place could be circular.

If you want to enjoy this place to it's full potential then I'd recommend doing it out of Tourist Season or an off peak time so if you are paying your £10 then you get your full moneys worth and won't...

This is a great walk, full of beautiful vistas around every corner. Plenty of car parking spaces if you arrive early in the day. There are 3 little places to buy ice cream and snacks from little shops and an ice cream van on the way around, though it is expensive and cash only. Toilets in a big proper cafe at the start, and again about 2/3 of the way around.

The route itself is suitable for small children provided they're heavily supervised. We took our little boy who's almost 3 and he managed almost all of it, but there are many precipitous drops with no fences (a lot is fenced but not all), so you'll need to keep an eye on them. It's good for dogs, too, but I'd keep them on a lead because of how many steep drop there are. The walk is not at all suitable for wheelchairs, unfortunately, as there are many staircases. It took us over 4 hours but that's mainly because the children were very slow. You could probably do it in 2 at a good pace.

So overall it's very good but I'm knocking a star off because of how brazenly money-grabbing it is. £15 for a family, or £6 per adult and £3 per child. You're paying a lot of money to access what is basically a natural landscape and 5 staff at various locations. Yes there's some maintenance cost with the wooden fences, but they must make an absolute fortune off the place. By the time we left there were easily 250-350 vehicles crammed into every inch of the huge car park. Assuming that almost all of them will have had at least two occupants, that's a large chunk of money. This isn't helped by the fact that the car park was absolutely 100% full when we left and you have to pay before getting into said car park, yet there was still a sizeable queue to get in and they were still taking admissions. The place was full of cars driving around hunting for a precious space (mine was claimed within 15 seconds when I left). It feels like it should either be free with a donation, or about half the...