Malham is a small dales village north of Skipton. Besides being the inspiration for Charles Kingsley's classic children's novel, The Water Babies , the area around Malham is perhaps most famous for some of the finest (and most spectacular) limestone scenery in the country. The classic limestone cliffs, crags, and scars, the unusual wildlife, and the miles of dry-stone walls, field barns, meadows and pockets of woodland create a special beauty in the Malham area.

Malham Cove is a huge natural limestone cliff, a gorge with an over-hanging rock over 30 meters high. This was once the scene of a spectacular prehistoric waterfall. Malham Beck now running through an underground cave system (still under exploration), and emerging at the foot of the cove before flowing through the centre of Malham.

Just east of Malham, Gordale Scar, is a gigantic collapsed cave system forming a twisting gorge between limestone cliffs. The Scar is reached by an easy walk through a field alongside Gordale Beck and when it is not in spate it is possible to climb parts of the waterfall. Nearby, Janet's Foss is another well known, but less rugged, waterfall, set in an area of old natural woodland.

North of the village takes you to Malham Tarn, with the Pennine Way passing close to the east. The Tarn lies on a bed of slate in a depression scoured out by glacier ice in the Ice Age, and is the highest lime-rich lake in the country - fed by springs bringing in dissolved limestone from the surrounding hills.

The whole area around Malham is popular with day-trippers, being easily accessible from Skipton.