- Location: Brimham Moor Road, Summerbridge, Harrogate HG3 4DW
- Opening times: Countryside, every day, 9.00am – dusk; visitor centre, kiosk, and second-hand bookshop 10.00am – 4.00pm.
- Entry: Free
- Access: Car park on site, charge applies.
Like the Stump Cross Caverns and the Coldstones Cut, Brimham Rocks was another chance discovery. Unlike the other two, I had heard of Brimham Rocks before and fancied seeing them, but as I had never got around to lodging their location in my brain I had no idea where they were. Lo and behold, according to an information board at the Coldstones Cut, they were about fifteen minutes away. It was going on six o’clock, and after a full day touring Annie and I could hear dinner and few pints of Timothy Taylor’s Landlord siren-calling all the way from Haworth, but who knows when I’ll be back this way again. The beers could wait a couple of hours, and we ended up settling on some service station sandwiches for dinner. Brimham Rocks, here we come!
Antiquarians from the Georgian era thought that the unusually shaped rocks at Brimham were created by the druids, the druids being Georgian antiquarians go-to answer for everything they didn’t understand (see also: Stonehenge, Avebury, Uffington White Horse, Cerne Abbas Giant, etc., etc). The rocks are in fact considerably older than the druids, dating back about 320 million years, and are formed from a sandstone called millstone grit. These rocks were then carved into the shapes we see today during the Last Glacial Period, which lasted from 115,000 to 11,700 years ago (also older than the druids), and since then they been further sculpted by the wind and the rain.
For the most part I’ll let the Rocks do the talking.
Destination or Diversion?
There is a visitor centre with shop, a kiosk selling drinks and hot and cold snacks, and a second-hand bookshop, but these were all closed by the time Annie and I arrived after six. Even without these distractions we spent a couple of hours at the site, so Brimham Rocks is not only a destination, but a must-see one at that. To paraphrase Ian Hunter, Brimham rocks!
