Yorkshire Dales & Moors

The Dales are a land of green valleys, limestone scars, waterfalls, drystone walls and stone villages, the countryside of James Herriot and All Creatures Great and Small. The Moors are higher and wilder, with heather that turns the hills purple in late summer, a steam railway across the plateau, Heartbeat country around Goathland and, on the coast, Whitby, with its harbour, its fish and chips and the ruined abbey that inspired Dracula. In between lie the spa town of Harrogate, the cathedral city of Ripon, Skipton at the gateway to the Dales and Haworth, where the Bronte sisters wrote. This guide picks 24 tours and experiences, from small-group day trips and food walks to ghost tours and private days out, adds eight hotels from town-centre classics to country houses and coastal estates, and gives you six guides on where to base yourself, what to eat, when to go and how to see it all without a car.