Description

Kingdale – A Hidden Treasure in the Dales

Watch our video describing this beautiful dale and what we’ll be seeing on this workshop

Here is a drone video we took in the area

Kingdale

King Dale is one of the smaller Yorkshire Dales which starts at Thornton in Lonsdale and  traverses the Western side of Whernside.

It is a beautiful flat-bottomed Valley with amazing views of Ingleborough on the lower stretches then flattens out for several miles.  towards the end it Rises steeply giving us a stunning views over to the howgill range and dentdale. 

The undisputed highlight of this walk though will be the prettiest waterfall on the Ingleton waterfall walk,  Thornton Force.  rather than walking the full route we can park in Kingsdale and walk about half an hour down to the The Fall. 

We will meet at the Marton Arms in Thornton in Lonsdale, This has a large car park which I’m sure  will have ample room for us to gather.  from this point we start our Trek out of civilization and up Thornton Lane.  after a mile or two we pause for views of Ingleborough.  this is one of the more striking mountains in the whole of the Dales and the view from this point is in my opinion one of the finest.  there are many limestone walls leading the eye I to the mountains which we can use in our compositions,  and there are usually lots of sheep in the fields, so plenty to use. 

Our next stop will be  2  walk up to some of the Limestone boulders on the side of the Valley which have small hawthorn trees growing out of them.  the challenge here is to compose a lovely shot of the upper parts of Kingsdale with a tree and some boulders making up the foreground.  These are Classic photographs and worth practicing, because you can use these skills anywhere in the Dales. 

After this we  follow the path down to the river twiss  to find the cascades just before the waterfall and of course Thornton force itself. This is around 40 or 50 Feet High and has a beautiful shape to it,  with lots of rocks and foreground interest to use. Here we will show you how to use long shutter speeds to blur the water and shorter shutter speeds  to freeze the movement so you can get different styles of Waterfall. 

Once we have finished at the waterfall, we will slowly head back to the cars to travel further up the valley, pausing in a few places to get some great shots of the Valley behind. You will see the flat bottomed Valley, straddled with ancient limestone walls. 

When we reach the summit of the road,  you will see one of my favourite views in the Dales,  looking into Deepdale. This is an offshoot from the parent valley, Dentdale. In the far distance there are some striking rounded mountains called the How Gills.  This is one of those locations where a long lens works for landscape photos, so definitely pack your longer lenses for this workshop. 

This is the view we will use for the sunset, so depending on the time we arrive, this will be the end of the workshop, If we have an hour or two to spare, we can travel down the hill to a pretty waterfall on the side of the road called Gastak Beck Waterfall. 

The Kingdale workshop will hopefully show you somewhere you’ve never seen before, and a new view of one of the finest mountains in the Dales, one of the most beautiful waterfalls in Yorkshire, and the stunning views you over Dent Dale and Deep Dale to finish off. 

We look forward to showing you this hidden gem in the Yorkshire Dales