In a landscape riddled with caves, Yordas Cave is something special. There can’t be many places as exciting as this which are so easy to access and don’t require any special equipment to visit.
Strap on a headtorch, venture into the darkness and it will reveal its secret. A hidden waterfall! The power of the falls and the amount of spray it gives off all add to the sense of adventure. It’s so dark that photos don’t do it justice, it’s something you really need to see with your own eyes.
Here’s everything you need to know about visiting Yordas Cave.
A quick note on cave safety
Before we get started on the details, it’s worth noting that though this is a very easy cave to access, do not visit if heavy rain is predicted. The water level in the cave can rise quickly.
You don’t have to visit during dry weather, but you don’t want to go on a day where the volume of water is predicted to be high (ie a drizzly day is ok). We visited after several weeks of rain (but none predicted that day) and the water level in the cave was around ankle height. If you don’t mind getting wet boots, this is no problem and the waterfall was really powerful, which was amazing to see.
In terms of exploring the cave, we only ventured into the main cavern, but we saw one (possibly two) additional passages, which I believe involve proper caving, rather than a simple walk through like the main chamber.
The walk to Yordas Cave
The stats
Distance: 320m return to the cave, 400m return to the waterfall
Elevation gain: 25m
Difficulty: Easy
The path to Yordas Cave
From the parking area in Kingsdale (full details at the end of this post) head through the gate shown in the photo below. Bear right and head up the grassy hill. It’s not too muddy even after rain.
You’ll arrive at a second gate after 150m. The cave entrance is just 10m away and you can see the entrance from here.
There’s a very slight descent down a few stone steps into the cave, which does get muddy, but it’s still easy enough.
The cave entrance looks small but it’s pretty much head height, as is the rest of the main chamber, which is why we didn’t take a helmet (although you may want one as a reader pointed out there is always a risk of falling rocks in caves).
Once you’re inside the cave you’ll descend a few more steps into the main cavern, again this first bit can be muddy. It wasn’t that slippery, but it’s worth watching your step here.
You’ll then reach the main chamber and almost all light fades away.
The cave surface also changes, it’s now stony, and if you’re visiting after rain like us, it may have turned into a little stream. The sound of rushing water inside the cave is exhilarating and definitely creates a sense of anticipation for what’s to come, the hidden waterfall.
This is the point that we realised the two new head torches we’d bought for this adventure were pretty useless, so my advice is to bring a good torch if you want to see the cave properly.
You can definitely get by with cheapies like we had, but it’s not a great viewing experience!
Exploring the chamber and finding the hidden waterfall
The waterfall is located about 40m into the cave in a small chamber known as ‘Chapter House’, towards the back right of the main chamber. The distance may be less than this as our watch was probably measuring our pigeon steps inside the dark cave as if they were normal strides!
Essentially it only takes a couple of minutes to reach. It’s all across the stony cave floor, some of which was possible to rock hop along, but we did hit some deeper bits which were around ankle height and flooded our boots.
However, if you’re visiting during a dry spell there may be little to no water running inside this part of the cave (although the waterfall would then be less impressive).
Having said that the word ‘Yordas’ is thought to have come from the Old Norse language and translates as ‘earth stream’, so perhaps it is always a bit wet!
You’ll see a little opening within the cave walls and the spray will probably hit you before you see the waterfall itself. It’s almost like a cave within a cave and it was amazing to peer into this ‘window’ and see such a powerful waterfall. Again unless you have the right equipment with you, you can’t really capture the waterfall well in photos, so it will be more impressive when you see it in real life!
The waterfall is definitely the main event in the cave, but you can wander the rest of the large chamber - though we don’t think there was much in the way of formations to see - though granted our feeble torches didn’t help here!
There are a couple of other passages we chose not to explore, because it looked like it was getting into proper caving territory and would require helmets etc.
One passage leads to Yordas Pot which is popular with cavers.
Torches: don’t make our mistake!
Having a good torch for Yordas Cave will make a big difference, as the cavern is really big it’s not always completely dark, meaning a weak torch (like on your iPhone or a cheap head torch) won’t illuminate anything much.
We made the mistake of having a head torch which was only 100 lumens, so we’d recommend buying one with a much bigger lumen count.
This headtorch on Amazon is 1,000 lumens, so it should do a lot better than ours!
Where to park for Yordas Cave
Yordas Cave is located in Kingsdale in Yorkshire. There is no official car park for the cave, but there is room for several cars to pull fully off the road at a lay-by just up from the gate leading to the cave. The coordinates for the parking area are: 54,2064851, -2.4509349 (you can find it on Google Maps by clicking here).
The cave is just over a 10 minute drive from Ingleton, an hour from Skipton and 40 minutes from Carnforth.
The cave is free to visit but has no facilities.
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