Stanley Ghyll Force

About this place

For more than a hundred years rhododendron smothered this ravine and hid its waterfall from view. Clearance began in 2019 — some seven hectares of it, stripped out by rope-access teams, national park rangers and volunteers — and the park crowned the work with a Victorian-inspired cantilevered viewing station that steps out over the 150-foot ravine and shows the upper, middle and lower falls together. The result is a pleasing irony: a waterfall people once had to squint at from the gorge floor is now seen from on high, and in full. The water drops roughly 18 metres into a narrow, moss-lined cleft in Eskdale, one of the quietest corners of the Lakes, a long way from the crowds of Windermere and Keswick. The walk starts at the small Trough House Bridge car park, or from Dalegarth station, the terminus of the narrow-gauge La'al Ratty railway. The first stretch is flat, following the beck between green boulders and over small wooden footbridges; at the last bridge you meet the tape and fencing. Rockfalls in April 2021 badly damaged the narrow path between that bridge and the lower falls, and the national park asks plainly that you do not cross the fencing, however safe it looks. Instead you climb a long flight of steep stone steps to the railed platform. Reckon on two to three kilometres there and back, an unhurried hour to an hour and a half. Set your expectations honestly: from the platform you are looking down from a height, so the fall feels a little distant; after heavy rain you hear it from the start of the path, while in a dry August it can thin to a thread. For families: this is emphatically not pushchair country. The path is wet, rocky and threaded with roots, and the final staircase needs small legs that can climb; children of six and up usually love it, and you will want to hold hands on the approach to the platform. There are no facilities at Trough House Bridge, but Dalegarth station nearby has toilets and a café. The ravine is a Site of Special Scientific Interest for its mosses, liverworts, rare ferns and lichens, and is at its greenest in spring and autumn. In winter the path stays open and free when many Lake District sites shut, but daylight is short and the rocks are slick. Getting here is the real test. Eskdale is remote: about an hour and a half by car from Windermere via the coast road (A590 then A595), or a shorter but hair-raising route over the Hardknott and Wrynose passes, with gradients approaching one in three that do not suit a hire car full of family or a driver new to them. So make a day of it: the La'al Ratty from Ravenglass to Dalegarth (£26 adult return, about 40 minutes each way), then Muncaster Castle on the way back. If you have only two or three days in the Lakes, skip it with a clear conscience; Aira Force is far easier. If you are staying a week and want a path with nobody else on it, this is the one.