Gaping Gill in the Dales is one of Britain's top 'hidden gems'

The cave, one of the most famous cave systems in the Dales with one of the largest known underground chambers in Britain, is found on the well trodden path to Ingleborough.

It came out third in the study carried out by Miller Homes after Uath Lochan Lake, in the Cairngorms and College Valley, Northumberland.

The National Park: Hidden Gems study analysed more than 2,200,000 Instagram location tags in the ten national parks. It took the places which had a low number of tags on Instagram, and compared this with the number of five-star reviews on TripAdvisor and Google Reviews, to reveal the top secret beauty spots in the UK.

Ravenscar, Scarborough, was placed eighth.

Debbie Whittingham, regional sales director at Miller Homes Yorkshire, said: “With the popularity of staycations, we expect huge numbers of families and friends to be exploring the UK’s national parks this year and beyond – after all, they are a fantastic example of the beauty which Britain has to offer not far from home.

“However, with so many people staying at home, popular walking and climbing spots in well-known locations are much busier than usual, particularly during peak holiday seasons right across the year.

“Most tourists tag the locations they go to visit on Instagram, and while these spots in our ‘hidden gems’ index have thousands of fewer posts than many popular areas, they all have exceptional ratings. This shows that when people do visit them, they have a fantastic time in an area which looks like it’s straight out of a painting and not quite so busy!”

The main chamber of Gaping Gill measures 129m long, 31m high, and 25m wide. Fell Beck pours over a lip of rock above and crashes 100m to the floor of the cavern before draining through to Ingleborough Cave.

Annual winch meets, when members of the public can pay to be lowered into Gaping Gill, are in normal years carried out by Bradford Pothole Club. The next meet is due to take place at the end of May, next year.