button to main menu   West's Guide to the Lakes, 1778/1821

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Page 272:-
'Hardraw-scar is near the town of Hawes, in Wensleydale, and bears some distant affinity to the tremendous Gordale (hereafter taken notice of.) The chasm is pervious at the bottom, and extends above three hundred yards in length, fortified with huge scattered rocks on each side, which are in some places thirty-three yards perpendicular, and the intervalum above eighty. At the far end is an amazing cataract, which pours forth a vast quantity of water, that falls into a deep bason. Behind the water-fall is a deep recess, excavated out of the solid rock. Here the spectator may stand behind the stream, secure from its madifying effects, and may go quite round it, upon one of the numerous saxa sedilia, at the distance of ten yards from the water. In the year 1740, when fairs were held on the Thames, this cascade was frozen, and constituted a prodigious icicle of a conic form, thirty-two yards and three quarters in circumference, which was also its height.'
After having determined to go to Settle, we had our doubt whether we should proceed by Ling-gill, which is a curious and romantic channel of a small river, having high and grotesque rocks on each side; or take a more western direction on the other side of the river Ribble, in order to see some other caves and chasms. Our taste for curiosities of this sort induced us to adopt the latter plan. We returned about a mile, before we left the turnpike-road, and then turning off to the left, proceeding almost to the same distance, we came to Alun or Alumn-pot, two or three furlongs above the little village of Selside. It is a round steep hole in the limestone rock, about eight or ten yards in diameter, and of a tremendous depth, somewhat resembling Elden-hole, in Derbyshire. We stood for some time on its margin, which is fringed round with shrubs, in silent astonishment, not thinking it safe to venture near enough to its brim to try if we could see to its bottom. The profundity seemed vast and terrible, from the continued hollow gingling noise excited by the stones we tumbled into it. We plummed it to the depth of a hundred and sixty-five feet, forty-three of which were in water, and this is an extra-
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gazetteer links
button -- "Alun Pot" -- Alum Pot
button -- Hardraw Force
button -- Hawes
button -- Ling Gill Beck

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