Category: YORKSHIRE

The doyenne of the Victorian spa town, prim, pretty Harrogate has long been associated with a certain kind of old-fashioned Englishness, the kind that seems to be the preserve of retired army chaps and formidable dowagers who, inevitably, will always vote Conservative. They come to Harrogate to enjoy the formidable flower shows and gardens that fill the town with an almost unparalleled array of colour, especially in spring and autumn, when the floral displays are at their height. It is truly fitting that the town’s most famous visitor was Agatha Christie, who fled here incognito in 1926 to escape her broken marriage.

When you think of South Yorkshire, you generally think of Sheffield, a city famous for its steel, especially the kind you use to cut and hold your dinner. This steel was forged, shaped and cooled in the city’s mills, which were in turn fuelled by the coal mined in the outlying pits – a most productive arrangement.

Monday and Saturday are market days in handsome Thirsk, which has been trading on its tidy, attractive streets and cobbled square since the Middle Ages. Thirsk’s brisk business was always helped by its key position on two medieval trading routes: the old drove road between Scotland and York, and the route linking the Yorkshire Dales with the coast. That’s all in the past, though: today, the town is all about the legacy of James Herriot, the wry Yorkshire vet adored by millions of fans of All Creatures Great and Small.

It seems that only Shakespeare himself is held in higher esteem and affection than the beloved Brontë sisters Emily, Anne and Charlotte, at least judging from the sheer numbers who trudge up the hill from the station to pay homage to them in the handsome parsonage where a handful of literary classics were born, including Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights.

Think West Yorkshire and you’ll probably come up with textiles. You’re not far wrong, for that tough and unforgiving industry drove the county’s economy and defined much of the landscape for centuries. But that’s all in the past, and West Yorkshire’s other identity – the softer, prettier one – has seen the transformation of a once hard-bitten area into quite the picture postcard. They may have gone a little soft round these parts, but don’t say it out loud, for it wouldn’t do in this no-nonsense, down-to-earth part of the world to suggest that West Yorkshire folk didn’t eat nails for breakfast.

Yorkshire’s funkiest little town is a former mill town that refused to go gently into that good night with the dying of industry’s light; it raged a bit and then turned itself into an attractive little tourist trap with a slightly off-centre reputation. Besides the honest-to-God Yorkshire folk who have lived here for years, the town is home to university academics, die-hard hippies and a substantial gay community – all of which explains the inordinate number of craft shops, organic cafés and second-hand bookstores.

When it comes to a bit of classy charm, Whitby blows all of northern England’s coastal resorts out of the water. The narrow medieval streets are lined with restaurants, pubs and cute little shops, and everything more or less leads down to the handsome harbour, where colourful fishing boats move in and out during the day. Keeping a watchful eye over the whole scene is the ruined and utterly atmospheric abbey atop one of the cliffs that hems the town.

York is the kind of place that makes you wish – if only for an instant – that the Industrial Revolution never happened, and reminds us of a world before the machines. A city of extraordinary cultural and historical wealth, its medieval spider’s web of narrow streets is enclosed by a magnificent circuit of 13th-century walls. At its heart lies the immense, awe-inspiring minster, one of the most beautiful Gothic cathedrals in the world. The city’s long history and rich heritage is woven into virtually every brick and beam; modern, tourist-oriented York – with its myriad museums, restaurants, cafés and traditional pubs – is a carefully maintained heir to that heritage.