White Scar is open from 10am daily February to October, weekends November to January (weather permitting). The cave is one and a half miles from the village of Ingleton, North Yorkshire, on the B6255 road to Hawes. There are bus services to Ingleton, and Ribble Head station is 5 miles from the cave.
The guided tour of the cave takes approximately 80 minutes and covers about a mile. Paths and lighting have been installed throughout the route, and the principal features of interest are floodlit. For much of the way, the path is made of open steel flooring, which enables visitors to see the underground stream flowing beneath their feet.
There is a new eco-friendly Visitor Centre with living grass roof.
White Scar Cave takes its name from the limestone outcrops or scars which overlook the entrance. The 'Three Peaks' - Ingleborough, Pen-y-ghent and Whernside - dominate this part of the Yorkshire Dales National Park. Their distinctive shapes are due to their structure: nearly horizontal layers of grit and shale which rest on the Great Scar Limestone. White Scar Cave was formed under Ingleborough between 400,000 and 100,000 years ago, in warmer periods which occured between the Ice Ages. Water flowed through the cracks in the limestone, dissolving and eroding the rock to produce the caverns, passages and formations that we see today.
The formations in White Scar Cave are of great variety, but they all depend on the same chemical process for their creation. The rainwater which trickles through the cracks and fissures in the limestone is acidic, because of the carbon dioxide dissolved in it from the atmosphere and the plant debris in the soil through which it has drained. It therefore attacks the limestone, taking some of it into solution as calcium bicarbonate.
Where the water seeps into a cave and comes into contact with air again, another chemical reaction takes place. Some of the carbon dioxide diffuses into the air, leaving the water less acidic and therefore able to hold less of the calcium bicarbonate. Some of this comes out of solution as a whitish mineral called calcite, which is a crystalline form of calcium carbonate. Black and grey discolouration of the calcite is due to traces of carbon and manganese. Red and yellow indicate the presence of iron.
The calcite deposits develop into characteristic cave formations. Stalactites grow downward where drips of water are released; stalagmites grow upwards where drips land (the Greek word for drip is stalagmatia). The rate of growth depends on local conditions, but a typical average figure is about one centimetre every 200 years. 'Straw' stalactites are hollow: fast dripping water leaves tiny rings of calcite which build on the tip, forming a thin tube. Water rippling over a surface produces flowstone, and great banks of this have formed at many points in the cave.
