How Stean Gorge is one of the wonderful, almost forgotten tourist attractions of the Victorian Age. It's hard now to visualise how the masses from the cities of the West Riding would stream out en-masse to places like Shipley Glen, Bolton Abbey and How Stean. There's not much left of the attractions at Shipley Glen, but How Stean being a natural feature it's pretty much unchanged since it opened in 1869.

Nowadays the attraction has been themed around the tale of Tom Taylor the highwayman whose hideout was a cave in the Gorge.

So what do you get for your fiver - or more likely for your nearly twenty quid for a family of four. Well, you get to enter a fabulous limestone gorge with pathways cut along the side and some interesting bridges across. In the middle of the Gorge it's dramatic and can only be viewed from above, but at either end it's more typical limestone river scenery where you can get down and quite safely paddle and splash about in the water. Kids absolutely love it, particularly at the Northern end where there's exciting paddling through "the tunnel", and at the Sothern end there's tons of room to sit down and picnic while the kids paddle.