🏰 History & heritage
Whitby Abbey
Dramatic Gothic ruin on the East Cliff that inspired Bram Stoker's 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
Eighteen miles of heritage steam railway from Pickering through Newton Dale to Grosmont and 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.
🌿 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 the widest scar on the coast 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 A1 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
The Moors 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 churches in Europe.
🏰 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
The remotest stop 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
Great Yorkshire Brewery at Cropton
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, plus forest Segway trails.
🚵 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
One of the grandest houses in England, in 1,000 acres of parkland fifteen minutes from the moors.
🎈 Family days out
International 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
The oldest Christian monument 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 visitor centre on the slipway with exhibits on the bay's geology, wildlife and smugglers.
🏰 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
Cleveland Ironstone Mining Museum
Underground tours of a real ironstone mine 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 nine moorland 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 real cape from the 1979 film.
🏰 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.