🏰 History & heritage
Whitby Abbey
Gothic ruin high on the East Cliff, with 1,300 years of history, a museum in Cholmley House and the view that helped inspire Dracula.
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Things to do
Abbeys and castles, waterfalls and beaches, steam trains and stargazing. Pick a category or browse the lot.
🏰 History & heritage
🏰 History & heritage
Rievaulx Abbey
One of the most complete and beautiful Cistercian abbeys in England, in a wooded valley near Helmsley.
🎈 Family days out
North Yorkshire Moors Railway
Twenty-four miles of heritage steam and diesel railway from Pickering through Newton Dale to Goathland, Grosmont and the sea at Whitby.
🌿 Moors & nature
Roseberry Topping
The distinctive mini-Matterhorn peak on the northern edge of the moors, with huge views for a short climb.
🌿 Moors & nature
Sutton Bank and the National Park Centre
James Herriot called this the finest view in England. Easy walks, cycle hire and a cafe on the escarpment edge.
🌿 Moors & nature
Hole of Horcum
A vast natural amphitheatre in the moors, said to have been scooped out by the giant Wade.
🚵 Active & outdoors
Dalby Forest
Forestry England's flagship forest with mountain bike trails, Go Ape, a visitor centre and dark skies.
🏰 History & heritage
Ryedale Folk Museum
Open-air museum of rescued moorland buildings: cottages, workshops, a chapel and a Victorian shop.
🎈 Family days out
Sutton Bank National Park Centre
The National Park's western visitor centre on top of the escarpment, with café, bike hire and the "finest view in England" a short walk away
🏰 History & heritage
Eden Camp Modern History Museum
Award-winning Second World War museum in a genuine prisoner-of-war camp on the edge of Malton
🌊 Coast
Runswick Bay
A mile of sheltered sand beneath a picture-book village of red-roofed cottages, one of the finest beaches on the coast
🌿 Moors & nature
Mallyan Spout
The highest waterfall in the National Park, a 20-minute walk from Goathland through a wooded gorge.
🌿 Moors & nature
Farndale daffodils
Every spring the banks of the River Dove fill with wild daffodils for a mile and a half.
🌊 Coast
Robin Hood's Bay beach and fossils
Rock pools, ammonites and a vast rocky scar exposed at low tide.
🏰 History & heritage
The 199 Steps and St Mary's Church
Whitby's famous stairway from the old town to the church and abbey on the East Cliff.
🌊 Coast
Staithes harbour and beach
Tiny harbour, fossil beach and the Cleveland Way clifftop path.
🏰 History & heritage
Helmsley Castle
Medieval castle with a shattered keep, Tudor mansion and Civil War history in the middle of the town.
🏰 History & heritage
Pickering Castle
Well-preserved motte-and-bailey castle used by medieval kings as a hunting lodge.
🏰 History & heritage
Mount Grace Priory
The best-preserved Carthusian monastery in England, with a reconstructed monk's cell and Arts and Crafts gardens.
🏰 History & heritage
Kilburn White Horse
Yorkshire's hill figure, cut in 1857 and visible from the A19 and the main railway line on a clear day.
🌿 Moors & nature
Falling Foss and the Hermitage
Woodland waterfall with a tea garden beside it and a cave hermitage carved from a boulder.
🏰 History & heritage
Rosedale ironstone kilns and railway
Industrial ruins along a level railway trackbed high above Rosedale, now one of the finest walks on the moors.
🌿 Moors & nature
The Bridestones
Weathered sandstone stacks on a heather ridge inside Dalby Forest.
🎈 Family days out
Danby Lodge National Park Centre
National Park visitor centre in the Esk Valley with exhibitions, gallery, cafe, play area and riverside walks.
🌿 Moors & nature
Cod Beck Reservoir
Pine-fringed reservoir with a level path all the way round, a mile from Osmotherley.
🏰 History & heritage
Nunnington Hall
Sheltered manor house on the River Rye with walled gardens, peacocks and the Carlisle collection of miniature rooms.
🍽️ Food & drink
Fish and chips in Whitby
Whitby claims the best fish and chips in Britain, and the queues on Pier Road suggest it might be right.
🍽️ Food & drink
The Lion Inn, Blakey Ridge
Sixteenth-century pub at 400 metres on the ridge between Rosedale and Farndale, miles from anywhere.
🌿 Moors & nature
Helmsley Walled Garden
Five acres of restored Victorian walled garden beneath the castle, run as a charity with a vine house cafe.
🌊 Coast
Ravenscar seal colony
Grey seals haul out on the rocks below the old alum works and can be watched from the cliff path.
🎈 Family days out
Goathland Station
The Hogsmeade of the first Harry Potter film, and a Heartbeat location, on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway.
🏰 History & heritage
Beck Isle Museum
Museum of rural life in a Regency house beside Pickering Beck, with a reconstructed street of shops.
🎈 Family days out
Flamingo Land
Theme park and zoo on the edge of the moors near Pickering, with roller coasters and 140 animal species.
🌊 Coast
Sandsend beach
Three miles of sand from Whitby to Sandsend, with the best rock pools at the far end.
🏰 History & heritage
Byland Abbey
Vast Cistercian ruin with a great rose window, once one of the largest Cistercian abbeys in Britain.
🏰 History & heritage
Whitby Museum and Pannett Park
Wonderfully old-fashioned museum of fossils, ships, whaling and the Hand of Glory, in a park above the town.
🏰 History & heritage
Captain Cook Memorial Museum
The house on Grape Lane where the young James Cook lodged as an apprentice, now a museum of his voyages.
🏰 History & heritage
Duncombe Park
Baroque country house and parkland on the edge of Helmsley, with a National Nature Reserve of ancient trees.
🌊 Coast
Saltwick Bay
Dramatic little bay under the abbey cliffs with a shipwreck, sea stacks and fossils.
🌊 Coast
Boggle Hole
A smugglers' cove with a youth hostel in the old mill, a mile south of Robin Hood's Bay.
🌿 Moors & nature
Levisham Station and Newton Dale
One of the remotest stops on the steam railway, at the bottom of a glacial gorge, with walks in every direction.
🌿 Moors & nature
Danby Beacon
A moor-top viewpoint above the Esk Valley with a modern beacon and views to the coast.
🍽️ Food & drink
Cropton Brewery and the New Inn
Village brewery behind the New Inn at Cropton, with tours, a tap room and a campsite.
🍽️ Food & drink
Whitby Brewery
Microbrewery in the shadow of the abbey with a tap room, live music and a view over the harbour.
🍽️ Food & drink
Fortune's Kippers
Whitby kippers smoked over oak in the same Henrietta Street smokehouse since 1872.
🚵 Active & outdoors
Boat trips from Whitby
Short harbour cruises, coastal trips beneath the abbey cliffs, sea fishing and whale watching.
🚵 Active & outdoors
The Cinder Track
The old Scarborough to Whitby railway, now a 21-mile traffic-free trail for walking and cycling.
🏰 History & heritage
Whitby jet
The black gemstone of Whitby, carved here since the Bronze Age and made famous by Queen Victoria.
🚵 Active & outdoors
Yorkshire Gliding Club
Trial gliding flights launched from the edge of Sutton Bank, riding the ridge lift above the Vale of York.
🎈 Family days out
Go Ape Dalby Forest
Treetop ropes course and zip wires among the pines, with a junior course for younger children.
🚵 Active & outdoors
Rosedale Chimney Bank
One of the steepest roads in England, 1 in 3 at its worst, and a legendary climb for cyclists.
🌿 Moors & nature
Scaling Dam
Reservoir on the northern edge of the moors with a sailing club, nature reserve and easy lakeside path.
🏰 History & heritage
Ampleforth Abbey
Working Benedictine monastery with a visitor centre, tea room, orchard and cider made by the monks.
🏰 History & heritage
Castle Howard
Vanbrugh's baroque palace in the Howardian Hills, with 1,000 acres of gardens, lakes and temples, a famous Christmas, and the Arboretum across the road.
🎈 Family days out
National Centre for Birds of Prey
Eagles, owls, vultures and falcons flown daily in the grounds of Duncombe Park.
🏰 History & heritage
St Gregory's Minster and Kirkdale Cave
A Saxon church with the finest pre-Conquest sundial in England, beside a cave full of Ice Age hyenas.
🏰 History & heritage
Cawthorn Roman Camps
Four Roman military earthworks on the moor edge north of Pickering, with a waymarked trail.
🏰 History & heritage
Wheeldale Roman Road
A mile of ancient paved trackway across the moor, long thought Roman, now a pleasing mystery.
🏰 History & heritage
Lilla Cross
Believed to be the oldest standing cross on the moors, marking where a thane died saving King Edwin in 626.
🌿 Moors & nature
Ralph Cross and Fat Betty
Two medieval waymarkers at the top of the moors, one the emblem of the National Park.
🌿 Moors & nature
Blakey Topping
A conical hill dropped by the giant Wade, ringed by standing stones and views into the Hole of Horcum.
🌿 Moors & nature
Thomason Foss
A hidden waterfall in a wooded gorge below Beck Hole, a short scramble from the pub.
🌊 Coast
Hayburn Wyke
A waterfall that tumbles straight onto a boulder beach in a wooded cove south of Ravenscar.
🌿 Moors & nature
Forge Valley Woods
A wooded gorge of the River Derwent where wild birds feed from your hand.
🏰 History & heritage
Shandy Hall
The house where Laurence Sterne wrote Tristram Shandy, now a museum and garden.
🏰 History & heritage
Mouseman Visitor Centre, Kilburn
The workshop of Robert Thompson, whose oak furniture carries a carved mouse, still made in the village.
🏰 History & heritage
Rievaulx Terrace
A curving grass terrace with two Georgian temples and framed views down onto Rievaulx Abbey.
🏰 History & heritage
Captain Cook Schoolroom Museum
The village schoolroom where James Cook learned to read and reckon, now a small museum.
🏰 History & heritage
Gisborough Priory
The soaring east end of an Augustinian priory church rising above the market town of Guisborough.
🏰 History & heritage
Old Coastguard Station, Robin Hood's Bay
National Trust building on the slipway at Robin Hood's Bay, with exhibits on the bay's geology, wildlife and smugglers. Its future is under review.
🏰 History & heritage
Ravenscar alum works and National Trust centre
The remains of a 17th-century chemical industry on the cliffs, and the story of the resort that never was.
🏰 History & heritage
Land of Iron (Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum), Skinningrove
Guided tours of the old Loftus ironstone mine buildings and drift entrance in the village of Skinningrove, on the coast north of Staithes.
🌊 Coast
Saltburn pier and cliff tramway
The last pier on the north-east coast and the oldest water-balanced cliff lift in Britain.
🍽️ Food & drink
Beck Hole and the Birch Hall Inn
A hamlet of nine cottages in the Goathland gorge with one of the smallest pubs in the country.
🏰 History & heritage
St Peter and St Paul, Pickering
Parish church with a complete cycle of 15th-century wall paintings, whitewashed over and rediscovered in 1852.
🚵 Active & outdoors
The Esk Valley Railway
A scenic branch line from Middlesbrough to Whitby that calls at a dozen moorland and Esk Valley villages.
🎈 Family days out
Grosmont engine sheds
Where the steam railway keeps and restores its locomotives, open to visitors through the old tunnel.
🌊 Coast
Whitby West Cliff and the whalebone arch
The Victorian side of town: whalebone arch, Captain Cook statue, the Royal Crescent and views to the abbey.
🎈 Family days out
The Dracula Experience
Animatronic walk-through of Stoker's novel on the harbourside, with a cape worn by Christopher Lee.
🏰 History & heritage
Staithes Heritage Centre
A reconstructed Staithes street of 1745 and the story of the young James Cook and the Staithes painters.
🌿 Moors & nature
Bransdale
The quietest dale on the moors, a National Trust estate with a restored watermill and a road that loops nowhere.
🍽️ Food & drink
Helmsley Brewing Company
Microbrewery and tap room a minute from Helmsley market square, brewing Yorkshire Legend and Striding the Riding.
🏰 History & heritage
Kirkham Priory
Ruined Augustinian priory with a magnificent carved gatehouse beside the River Derwent
🏰 History & heritage
Ormesby Hall
Georgian mansion of the Pennyman family on the edge of Middlesbrough, with a model railway and parkland walks
🏰 History & heritage
Kirkleatham Museum
Local history museum in a Queen Anne mansion, with the Saxon Princess treasures and 20 acres of grounds
🏰 History & heritage
Whitby RNLI Lifeboat Museum
Free volunteer-run museum on Pier Road telling the story of Whitby's lifeboats and their famous rescues
🌿 Moors & nature
Mulgrave Woods and Castle
Private estate woodland behind Sandsend, open three days a week, with the ruins of a medieval castle hidden in the trees
🌿 Moors & nature
Yorkshire Lavender
Hillside lavender farm and gardens in the Howardian Hills with views across to the moors
🚵 Active & outdoors
Lordstones Country Park
Café, farm shop and glamping site on Carlton Bank, right on the Cleveland Way with huge views over the Vale of Mowbray
🌿 Moors & nature
Captain Cook's Monument
Sixty-foot obelisk on Easby Moor above Great Ayton, an easy climb with views to Roseberry Topping and the sea
🌿 Moors & nature
The Wainstones
Dramatic sandstone crags on Hasty Bank, the most striking rock feature on the Cleveland Way
🌊 Coast
Ravenscar National Trust Visitor Centre
National Trust information centre and shop at the start of the coast path to Robin Hood's Bay, with seal-watching and alum-works walks
🏰 History & heritage
Rotunda Museum
Circular 1829 geology museum built to William Smith's design, home to Gristhorpe Man and the Jurassic Coast's fossils
🌿 Moors & nature
Castle Howard Arboretum
120-acre garden of trees from around the world on the Castle Howard estate, with lakes, walks and a good café
🎈 Family days out
Mathewsons Classic Cars (Bangers and Cash)
The Thornton-le-Dale classic car auction house made famous by TV's Bangers and Cash, with a shop and a small motor museum
🏰 History & heritage
Scarborough Castle
Medieval royal castle on the headland between Scarborough's two bays, with 3,000 years of history and huge views along the coast