North Yorkshire

Introducing North Yorkshire

The largest of Yorkshire’s four counties is also the most beautiful, if only because unlike the rest of northern England, mills and mines are nowhere to be found. Blissfully free of the landmarks of the Industrial Revolution, North Yorkshire has, since the Middle Ages, always been about sheep and the woolly wealth that they produced.

Instead of smoke-bellowing factories and labour-abusing mills and mines, the man-made monuments that dot the landscape round these parts are of the magnificent variety: the great houses and rich abbeys that sit ruined or otherwise in glorious isolation from the rest of the world are a reminder that there was lots of money to be made off the sheep’s back. Indeed, much of North Yorkshire’s untamed, untouched quality is preserved within the confines of the county’s two superb national parks – the Yorkshire Dales and North York Moors.

But North Yorkshire’s biggest attraction is urban. Sure, the genteel spa town of Harrogate and the blowsy, dramatically situated resorts of Scarborough and Whitby have many fans, but literally nothing compares to the unparalleled splendour of York, northern England’s most visited town.

Last updated: Feb 17, 2009