Limestone Pavement at the foot of Ingleborough

THEY are a major feature of the Yorkshire Dales landscape, and later this month rocks and their impact on our countryside will be the subject of a special day-school organised by the National Park Authority.

The event will see the launch of the Your Dales Rocks Project - a Local Geodiversity Action Plan (LGAP) for the Yorkshire Dales and Craven Lowlands that aims to highlight the huge range of rocks within the area.

Organised by the National Park and the North Yorkshire Geodiversity Partnership, the event will look at how rocks have helped shape today's landscape and to outline how to manage the features for the benefit of the public.

Dales Volunteer Adrian Kidd, the LGAP Project Officer, said: "The Yorkshire Dales National Park is well known for its spectacular landscape of limestone pavements, caves and dramatic landforms such as Malham Cove and Gordale Scar, but it also includes many other geological features including, at nearly 500 million years in age, the oldest rocks in Yorkshire.

"The first aim of the action plan is to undertake an audit of the rocks, minerals, fossils, mineral veins, coal seams, quarries and geomorphological landforms - including, for example, glacial features produced during the last ice-age - which together form the project area's geodiversity.

The Yorkshire Dales National Park is well known for its spectacular landscape of limestone pavements

Adrian Kidd - YDNPA

"Our next job is to identify the best sites, and produce information to explain their formation. This could be in the form of a simple geological map illustrating the sites, a series of information leaflets, or information available on CD or websites, including those of the YDNPA, the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty."

The day school will be held at Ingleborough Community Centre in Ingleton on 26 May and will be chaired by YDNPA chairman Carl Lis.

The topics covered will range from glaciation to quarrying and mining and the morning session will be followed by a series of guided walks led by experts.

Following the launch, YDNPA staff will tour agriculture shows in the National Park with a special display about geodiversity and the Authority-owned Dales Countryside Museum will stage a family exhibition - called Dales Rocks! - from 21 July to 31 August.