Yorkshire is a large county that spans the east and west of England. Containing the Yorkshire Dales and Yorkshire Moors, it also is home to the elegant city of York, the vibrant city of Leeds and the floral city of Harrogate. Inland you’ll find Hebden Bridge (one of the world’s first Transition Towns) with a strong heritage of poetry, art and music.
If you cross the width of England on Wainwright’s Coast-to-Coast Walk, you start in the village of St Bees (Cumbria) and end the walk, when you paddle your feet in the little East Yorkshire coastal village of Robin Hood’s Bay. The Yorkshire skies are home to many soaring birds of prey, including on the coastal cliffs. Find more ways to help your local wildlife rescue and animal shelter.
The Coastal Resorts of Yorkshire
When we think of seaside resorts, often it’s of places like Weston-super-Mare or elegant quiet resorts in Norfolk or Suffolk. But England’s first-ever seaside resort was the Yorkshire town of Scarborough. Yorkshire is not so much sunny beaches and buckets and spades. More cold weather, high ways and birds of prey looking out from cliffs, over their kingdom.
Check beach bans before travel with dogs (making this clear helps prevent irresponsible people leaving dogs in cars). Keep dogs away from seal pups, as many rest with mums in hidden dunes (bites are vicious). If you see a creature who needs help, call British Divers Marine Life Rescue (never put seal pups back in the sea, they could drown).
- Scarborough is the main Yorkshire resort, facing the North Sea (the most shallow sea that faces Scandinavia) and has a harbour and limestone cliffs, protected by rocky headland. The ruins of an 11th century castle divde the sea into two bays.
- Filey is the smallest of the main seaside resorts (there are more coastal villages). This northern beach forms the eastern part of the long-distance Cleveland Way footbath.
- Whitby is an interesting town steeped in history (where Captain Cook learned to sail and inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula). This smuggling town used to be a whaling port.
An Ode to a Yorkshire River
Walking the Wharfe is a book by a Johno Ellison, who grew up in the village of Boston Spa, and spent his childhood exploring the riverbanks of Lower Wharfedale, plus upstream hills and valleys. After becoming a helicopter pilot (and travelling the world in a London black cab), he returns to the Yorkshire waterway where he grew up, retracing the steps of Victorian author Edmund Bogg, to see how the riverscape and its communities have evolved.
While wild camping and meeting modern-day Vikings, he encounters stories of wartime ghosts and learns how to deal with a herd of over-inquisitive cows. Starting in the Vale of York, he walks upstream to explore Viking and Roman heritage, and more modern developments like Tadcaster’s disastrous bridge collapse. He visits Victorian spa towns, and enjoys rare wildlife like red kites and otters, which have returned due to conservation efforts.
Crossing Yorkshire Dales National Park, he is entranced by local legends of giants, and seduced into wild swimming in a chilly river (but not the section of the Wharfe notorious worldwide for drowning everyone who has ever tumbled into it). He seeks refuge in a candlelit pub during a storm, and meets a family who has farmed the Yorkshire hills for five generations. Then at the end of his journey, the author reaches the Wharfe’s trickling source amid a vast boggy moorland.
