Ingleborough: Yorkshire's famous mountain with its own Iron Age fort

Every year thousands of walkers, runners and cyclists celebrate reaching its highest point of 2,372ft (723m) knowing they have climbed the last of Yorkshire’s Three Peaks on the famous 24-mile challenge route.

Geologists have described its make-up as a sandwich cake comprising many different layers of rock types, including sandstones, limestones and millstone grit.

The first part of the name, Ingle - derived from the old Scots-Gaelic word for “fire” - suggests that long ago beacons were lit there, while borough is a later version of the Old English burh, meaning fortified place.

Sure enough, there are remains of an Iron Age fort on the summit plateau, with a few hut circles still visible.

Another relic relates to one of Ingleborough’s curiosities.

A large cairn found on the south-west corner of the summit edge, where the path comes up from Ingleton, is all that remains of a battlemented tower constructed as a small hospice in 1839.

It seems the opening ceremony turned into a drunken party, and the building was wrecked.

In 1993 some 1,700 acres of Ingleborough were formally declared a National Nature Reserve by King Charles III, then Prince of Wales.

Underground lies a vast labyrinth of caves and passages, while at the summit windbreak is a toposcope - a view indicator - enabling visitors to name the Lake District peaks to the west and, on a clear day, identify Snaefell on the Isle of Man.

The guidebook author, Alfred Wainwright, once took the Ordnance Survey to task for naming the fell Ingleborough Hill on maps. “It is every inch a mountain,” he complained.