Places to visit, attractions, heritage and things of interest in North Yorkshire, England.
The great tempest broke rapidly and without warning in the darkness. The sea around Whitby convulsed, waves rising in growing fury, over-topping one another, beating white-topped on the sands, rushing up the cliffs and breaking with great spumes over the piers of the harbour. Adding to the difficulties and dangers of the night, a huge
Dracula and Whitby Read More »
Yorkshire and the Humber
Or it could be the other way round. Son of Britain and I had often considered meandering through Swaledale between the small villages of Keld and Muker. Once, we had even chanced, equipped with boots and all the trimmings, as far as the car park in Keld. But it had been a day when the
Swaledale ‘twixt Muker and Keld Read More »
Yorkshire and the Humber
At 10pm BST on 4th August 2014, the villagers of Burton in Lonsdale, a small community of fewer than 600 souls in North Yorkshire, on the borders with Lancashire and Cumbria, gathered on the village green by the old war memorial. At 10.15, there was a short service. Then, the people walked around the old
According to property website Zoopla, on average, Britons move home every 23 years. This creates a diverting image of millions of us upping sticks and all swapping houses every two decades or so. It also means that the above average among us has moved far more frequently than that and, at the other end of
Tiptoe through the tulips at Constable Burton Read More »
Yorkshire and the Humber
If you went to school in Britain, and paid attention during geography lessons, you probably know all about Malham. Amongst other things, it is famed for its limestone topography. My failure at geography was spectacular, but even I remember pouring over Ordnance Survey maps trying to pick out the characteristic features that the erudite, kindly
Yorkshire’s Castle Howard has no dastardly legends to keep you awake at night; there is no obvious sign of blood seeping out of its mellow stonework. It sits, in innocent splendour, a stately home in English Baroque and Palladian style, created for the vanity of its owners, a palatial celebrity famous for – well, being
A day at Castle Howard Read More »
Yorkshire and the Humber
I was looking for three enormous prehistoric standing stones, or menhirs. As you do. And you would think they were difficult things to mislay, wouldn’t you? I knew roughly where they were meant to be, just to the west of Boroughbridge in North Yorkshire, very close to the A1 trunk road. Whoever put these things
Hunting the Devil’s Arrows Read More »
Yorkshire and the Humber
Scarborough Castle dominates the Victorian Yorkshire seaside resort from a massive precipitous headland bulging up from the North Sea. The fortress has a fascinating three and a half thousand year, often bloody, story to tell, but one of its more dubious charms seems to be that the ghost of Piers Gaveston, Earl of Cornwall, and
Who haunts Scarborough Castle? Read More »
Yorkshire and the Humber
We tend to see modern towns and villages as permanent things. They may change, but it’s hard to imagine the landscape without them and easy to take it for granted that they will last forever. Yet the world is littered with places that have been lost along the way – abandoned communities, traces of old
Wharram Percy DMV Read More »
Yorkshire and the Humber
The British like to see themselves as keen gardeners. Indeed, some consider gardening to be a national pastime and would be mildly surprised to discover that people in other countries do it too. Of course, as an island race, we often prefer well-ordered borders; for some, it is a perennial fixation. According to the Horticultural
Village open gardens Read More »
All Events Yorkshire and the Humber
Up on the moors on the edge of the Forest of Bowland is a large, box-shaped, chunk of rock. It sits just inside North Yorkshire on the border with Lancashire. With characteristic English wit and imagination, it is known as the Big Stone, or the Great Stone of Fourstones – because apparently there used to be
The Great Stone of Fourstones Read More »
North West England Yorkshire and the Humber
I was on a boys’ weekend in Whitby. You know, don’t you, that ‘boys’ in this context actually means ‘grown men’. In fact, it would be more accurate to say ‘mature men who should know better’. But we’ll settle with ‘boys’; it’s a comforting euphemism. It’s just occurred to me that ‘euphemism’ can be a
The train will arrive in a heartbeat Read More »
Yorkshire and the Humber