High force
| High force | ||
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 The High Force waterfall after heavy rainfall |
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| Coordinates | 54 ° 39 ′ 1 ″ N , 2 ° 11 ′ 15 ″ W | |
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| place | County Durham , England | |
| Number of fall levels | 1 | |
| flow | Teas | |
The High Force is a waterfall in the course of the River Tees in County Durham near Middleton-in-Teesdale in England . The waterfall is in the North Pennines Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty .
At the High Force waterfall, the tea falls 21 m vertically, which is roughly the height of the Aira Force . The waterfall is often referred to as the highest in England, but these are the above-ground Cautley Spout waterfall and the Gaping Gill underground waterfall .
The waterfall was created by the fact that the tea washed out ' soft ' layers of rock underneath which a layer of ' hard ' dolerite ( called Whin Sill ) lies over which the river now flows. Under the dolorite, however, there is first a 'soft' layer of sandstone and then another ' soft' layer of limestone . This stratification leads to the fact that the river only slowly removes the 'hard' dolerite, it washes the other rock layers faster and so an overhang is created while the waterfall retreats further and further. The erosion has created a gorge around 700 m long.
Since the tea is now regulated by the Cow Green Reservoir , the river now only flows in rare cases over two separate places, as JMW Turner painted in a watercolor in 1816 .