General   (General discussion, talk about anything.)

This is a PAINTING (more on that later) of a waterfall.

It is only a tad over sixty miles from Wigan.

It is the tallest unbroken fall of water in UK.

It is more than twice the height of Niagara. (Obviously, it does not have anything like the volume of Niagara)



Very few people have seen this.

The reason being that it is completely underground.

It is the fall of Fell Beck, down the vertical shaft and into the subterranean chamber of Gaping Gill.

Of course, you can visit Gaping Gill. On May and August Bank Hols, Bradford or Craven caving clubs set up scaffold and power winch, so that you can be lowered down and hauled back up whilst you sit in a chair.

video

As you can see, you have to wear a chem suit, or your clothing would be soaked. But, the beck is most often dammed for these occasions. What you see is the water escaping the dam through rock fissures: a spray, a tiny fraction of what the beck otherwise pours in.

So even though Gaping Gill gets visitors, very few of them will have seen the waterfall proper.

You can photograph this spray:


But it is a bit like photographing a waterfall sans the water. Images of the waterfall proper are few and tend to be taken from some distance away. Such as this one.



There is no natural light, and close up, there is so much suspension of water droplets in the air, both rigged cave lighting and flash bounce back so your photo comes out as a picture of a bank of fog.

Also, naturally the fall is most spectacular when the beck is in spate. This also results in the greatest danger. You can see from the strewn boulder field that some hefty lumps of rock can be washed down.

Hence the reasons for me showing the painting, and comment that very few people have seen this.

Just some cool musings for a hot day.