After an early lunch, I motored over the hill to Malham, inched my car into one of the few available parking spaces and sauntered along the path for Janet's Foss, heading for Gordale Scar.

I was in limestone country. This pearl-grey rock lights up the landscape in the south-west of the Dales National Park.

Carrying a local guide book issued 110 years ago, I followed the path on the quiet side of the Malham Beck, leaving the other bank to a happy throng of day-trippers. On my way to Janet's Foss, I watched a waller handling rounded pieces of limestone - the worst type of wall-building material - with experienced ease. Limestone is hard stuff that would make the hands of a gloveless waller bleed.

A centuries-old ash tree rested on a base consisting of roots that stood proud of the ground. It was as though it had curved legs. A small child delightedly crept between them. Like many another ash in this area, the tree had split but refused to die and, each spring, donned a veil of greenery.

After doffing my cap to the local dipper, I exchanged the sunny fields for the deep shadows of the wood in the gorge leading up to Janet's Foss. Apart from the gurgle of the beck, nothing could be heard. In spring, the cawing of rooks provides that most English of background sounds.

Who was Janet, after whom the foss is named? My old guide book stated that "this weird-looking place" was the favourite haunt of "some Fairy Queen of old". She lived in a cave, but this is too grand a term for the hollow at the far side of the waterfall.

Peter Sharp, of Malham, calls her Jenny Green-teeth, a local name for a witch. Children were warned off the deep plunge-pool by parents who told them that if they went near, a witch would get them!

Emerging from the church-like gloom of the woodland, I strode towards Gordale Scar, passing happy suckers of ice cream and lollies and hearing the excited voices of children echoing in the void under the new bridge which spans the beck. The area near Gordale Farm was bright with the tents of campers.

An old lady who, as a girl, had visited relatives at the farm, had a tale to tell of the celebrated Walter Morrison, the millionaire owner of Malham Tarn estate. When he was showing guests the natural spectacle of the area, he stayed at the farmhouse, sipping tea and chatting, while his friends completed the journey to Gordale.

I followed a dusty white path, beside a beck which seems to have an aversion to flowing straight. In the slack water were mats of water-cress. I overtook two acquaintances who are now well into their eighties. The lady said she recently climbed the flight of steps to stand on the top of Malham Cove.

Ahead of me were limestone scars, interspersed with steep ground holding a summer slush of grass. House martins that nest in Gordale were maintaining a shuttle service with food for their young. Other martins attach their mud-and-feather nests to Malham Cove where, alas each year a number of birds fall prey to the local peregrine falcons.

Gordale Scar is really a gorge eroded by a furious rush of melt-water towards the end of glacial times. Its waterfalls were in sunlight. Silent visitors took in the sight of limestone cliffs overhanging grandly at the top and of white water flowing over tufa, which is built up, like leaves in a book, from a deposition of lime by the beck.

The Victorian guide book writer, over-awed by Gordale, and taking enthusiasm too far, wrote: "Is this indeed the actual first work of the Divine Mater on which I gaze? Were these precipices shaped by His finger, as Adam was shaped out of the dust?"

He added: "The ascent of the Scar is frequently made, even by ladies, and sometimes by children." A steady procession of visitors clambered up the tufa deposits to gain the upper part of the gorge where some modern steps lead up to what our old-time writer described as a "rocky, savage-looking moor".

I returned to Malham by the path lying to the north of Cawden Hill, and chanced upon a 1998 excavation into an ancient settlement being conducted by the Department of Archaeological Sciences at the University of Bradford. The University has been recording and excavating sites in the area since 1994, working in conjunction with the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

When one of the buildings was excavated in 1997, a wide variety of animal bone, together with fragments of pottery from the late Iron Age and Roman periods, came to light. People were living in this free-draining limestone countryside around 2,000 years ago. It was hoped that this year's excavation would throw further light on how these people lived.

The old guide book gives us an insight into how the Victorian tourists lived. Mr Armstrong, at the Buck Hotel, "five miles from Bell Busk station", offered a large dining room, private sitting room and good beds. The Lister's Arms had "good beds, stabling, and c".

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.