The great outdoors captivates across Yorkshire & Northumberland

The North of England offers a staggering treasure trove for lovers of the great outdoors. I now understand why the roads are clogged with caravans, every small town's high street has a hiking store, so many cars sport bike racks and the world-famous "Tour de France" expanded its venue to Yorkshire. There are deep, green valleys bisected with picture-perfect rivers. Vast moors covered with heather that, in its August bloom, looks like the heavens have been raining light purple paint. Long beaches of powdery sand, bordered by an ecosystem of dunes covered with grasses flowing like an inland sea.

The vistas are wide, the roads quiet and the crowds ... at least in this year of Covid-19 ... minimal. My usual holiday is a cultural one, as this blog attests. But if you wanted to do a holiday that was purely about hiking, swimming and cycling, you could pack two weeks here with highly varied activities. Or just unpack a lawn chair, sit next to your car in a picturesque lay-by and drink in the view.

Our wanderings didn’t even include the world-famous Lake District, on the Western edge of the region we explored. Here are the most beautiful natural sites we encountered. Not particularly fit? Neither are we. Though all of these areas are ideal for hikers, we consumed an impressive amount through easy drives or short, gentle walks. 

 The Yorkshire Dales

When you see idealised visions of the English countryside, they’re probably either set in the Cotswolds, or the Yorkshire Dales. The two are similar, but everything is bigger in the dales. Valleys are deeper. Rivers broader. Hills higher. Sheep and cows wander in greater profusion. The area makes you understand why people from Yorkshire pronounce their home county to be “God’s Country” with such knowing confidence.

You can easily do a whole holiday in the Dales, especially if you’re keen on hiking, but it’s also possible to do a satisfying circle tour in a day that gives you a range of sights and isn’t particularly challenging driving. Though the roads do get narrow in places and you might lose some time caught behind farmers moving their cows between fields. 

Our 120-mile round trip from Harrogate took the B6265 through Hebden, Then turned North through Kettlewell to Aysgarth, then West to Hawes before turning South to Ingleton, where ... sated with magnificent landscapes ... you join the A65 and zip back to Harrogate on major roads. It’s a 3.5 hour drive without stopping but you will, of course, pull over for countless photos and dawdle at various tourist attractions.

Along the way you’ll find high moors, both spectacular and desolate, with views that go on for miles. In between them are deep valleys, sometimes wooded and sometimes full of lush green fields, each characterised by the gentle rivers that wind through them. In some places there are spectacular rock formations, showing the massive power of ancient glaciers. Other bits are more distinctively shaped by man, with miles of stone walls segmenting the fields. There’s a famous waterfall at Aysgarth that descends in broad plateaus and is gentle enough for people to wade in. On the hot, sunny day of our drive, people had packed that site and were bathing anywhere the landscape allowed easy access to the crystal-clear rivers.

Hawes is the logical half-way point on the drive, a tourist town packed with pubs and small independent shops. It’s also home to the Wensleydale Creamery, largest producer of the area’s famous cheeses and well worth a stop. (Under normal circumstances there’s a factory tour, currently shut down by Covid-19. The restaurant and shop, with cheese and Yorkshire-themed gift items, were doing a roaring trade.) The star site on the way back to the A65 is the Ribblesdale Viaduct, a bold Victorian architectural statement stretching across a particularly vast and wild moorland landscape.

The North York Moors

Any English person will tell you the reason we all head to the airport for our holidays is the weather. If you could guarantee sun, we’d never leave. But few people want to take the gamble. Our day on the North York Moors was a case in point. I can tell you that Hutton-le-Hole is a ridiculously charming village of matching grey stone buildings with red tile roofs that cascades down a hill on either side of a village green where stepped banks lead to a small, swiftly-flowing stream. The Crown, near the top of town, is the kind of cosy, well-appointed country pub we all fantasise about having as our local, complete with hearty ploughman’s lunches and bowls of clear water for your dogs. And I can assure you that it all looks fabulously romantic even with threatening skies and swirling mists.

After that, however, my entire impression of this famous National Park is of a ribbon of tarmac, a strip of heather on either side of the car and the occasional sheep too close for comfort in the roughly 10 feet of visibility we had for our entire journey across the moors. A few times we descended into villages, where the fog cleared a bit and we could make out the profiles of farmhouses and fields tucked in protective greenbelts below the high moors. But for more that that, I have to rely on other people’s photos. If you’d actually been staying in the National Park, you wouldn’t have wanted to set foot outside your front door. In fact, travel very far on foot would probably have been dangerous as you would inevitably loose your way.

This was a bitter disappointment, as the landscape is legendary and its famous heather was in bloom. But weather in Britain is a bit like strikes in Italy; best not to expect 100% tourism success and have Plan B ready for when circumstances get in the way. On this day, for us, the disappointment also included Robin Hood’s Bay, a picturesque run of cliffs and beaches just south of Whitby. Though we drove as far as Whitby (underwhelming), it was pointless to seek out more views with such limited visibility. The alternative was arriving at our hotel early. In a future story I’ll write about Lumley Castle and you’ll see that was no great sacrifice.

Hadrian’s Wall

Yes, this is a cultural site, with museums, ruins and lots to learn along its route, but exploring this World Heritage Site is also a blockbuster landscape experience. The Romans chose a natural ridge in rolling border country. Sometimes it’s no more than a gentle hill, but others it’s a towering escarpment, as if the land had formed itself into a wave to crash down into the lands to the North. The wall runs 73 miles from the banks of the Tyne to Solway Firth, and keen walkers can follow the whole thing on a clearly-signposted path. It’s harder to follow by car. 

Though the B6318 follows most of it, the road meanders and the ruins often disappear into farm fields. It’s a beautiful drive, and it does occasionally run right next to the wall and various mile posts (guard towers), most standing no more than a few feet above the ground. 

But you won’t get much sense of the scale of the thing without a bit of a hike.

The most dramatic place to take it all in is probably at Housesteads Fort, one of the biggest excavated areas along the wall. (Managed between English Heritage and the National Trust, and free to members of either.) Be ready to use your imagination; this is not the Great Wall of China. Hadrian’s Wall has been a convenient source of dressed stone for locals for centuries, so there’s not a great deal left. What you get at Housesteads is the excavated foundations of a full army camp stretching right up to the wall, and a clear view of the wall running in either direction, in particularly dramatic landscape. This is one of those places where the wall took advantage of a high, natural escarpment to dominate all around. There’s a valley on both sides, so it’s a hike down and up again to reach the site from the car park. But it’s worth the effort both for the ruins and the views. From there you can have a fairly gentle stroll for at least a mile in either direction before you have to conquer any more inclines, all the while taking in expansive views.

This might have technically been the end of civilisation, but on a sunny day, looking out on mile after mile of green, gentle, rolling farmland, with a proper Roman baths complex to soak away your worries at the end of the day, this can’t have been too bad a posting. 

The Northumbrian Coast

If they bordered warm waters rather than the North Sea, Northumbria’s beaches would regularly grace the covers of luxury travel magazines. They are, quite simply, spectacular. The sand is golden and fine, and beaches stretch for uninterrupted miles with nothing but grassy dunes or farm fields behind them. It’s no surprise that they reminded me of the glorious and equally empty beaches around Skagen, Denmark, since that’s what’s on the other side of the water. Even when civilisation intrudes, it’s a picturesque fishing village, a handful of stone holiday cottages or a dramatic castle rather than high-rises or urban spaces. 

You’re at the mercy of the weather, of course. Over five days in Northumbria we experienced one of impenetrable fog and steady drizzle, two with glowering grey skies and intermittent downpours, and two of idyllic perfection, with temperatures in the mid 20s (low 70sF), blazing sun, gentle breezes and white marshmallow clouds giving depth to vivid azure skies.

On the best of those days we spent a morning on Alnmouth beach, so enormous that even with a full car park (be prepared to pay the princely sum of £3 to park for the day), people simply disappear along its length. As you might guess from its name, this is the village where the river Aln meets the sea, several miles East of the larger Alnwick and its castle. By the time the river enters the beach it’s abandoned most of its force in water meadows behind the village, leaving only a shallow stream of bright, pure water to meander across perhaps 200 metres of sand before merging with the sea. (The extraordinary breadth of the sand here reminds me of the more famous Holkham Beach in Norfolk.) A dune-covered headland juts out to the North, but to the South you can see ... and walk ... for miles on beaches that are generally empty of other humans once you get a few hundred yards past the car park. The water here is shallow quite a ways into the surf, making it ideal for wading and giving it a chance to warm up to something a little less numbing when the sun is at full strength.

Equally fine was St. Aidans beach (first photo in this section, and below), in between the fishing village of Seahouses and the majestic Bamburgh Castle. There’s no official car park here, therefore even fewer people. Watch out for a National Trust sign next to a group of coastal cottages, with free parking on the grass beside the road. A narrow path next to the cottages leads down to a glorious beach where you’ll often find yourself alone for many minutes before another walker passes. Off shore you can see the outline of the Farne Islands, famous for bird watching, and you’ll hear the buzz of tourist boats going to and fro, but that will be the only sign of human habitation on much of this stretch. 

Alnwick Moors

We might have missed the North York moors behind their screen of fog, but we got Alnwick’s version instead. The B6341 between Alnwick and Cragside cuts in an easy-to-drive straight line through heather-covered moor and long views. There’s the occasional sight like the rock escarpment at Corby Crag or the ruins of the castle at Edlingham, but it’s mostly just miles of hauntingly-barren heather. Barren, that is, except in late august, when the moors come into bloom and the entire landscape turns an otherworldly pinky-purple.

The moorland landscape is interrupted by the estate at Cragside, where builder Lord Armstrong claimed that he planted over seven million trees. Even if he overstated, there’s no denying that he completely transformed the landscape, creating an ecosystem closer to the foothills of the Alps in the middle of these moors. The Alpine landscape was meant as a suitable setting for his Victorian pastiche castle, often called England’s Neuschwanstein. The house is currently closed thanks to the pandemic, but I suspect most locals come here for the landscape. 

There are more than 40 miles of marked hikes through the forests, many of them with spectacular views of Armstrong’s house, the lakes he built to provide hydro-electric power to run it (in the late 19th c; it was the first house in the world use hydroelectric energy), or the dramatic crags, burns and moorland views that preceded him. Not up for hiking? There’s a 7-mile “carriage ride” with frequent lay bys to pull over and appreciate the view. The heather made Cragside glorious in August, but the number of Rhododendron and azalea planted throughout the estate suggest May and June must be brilliant, too.

Alnwick, Harlow Carr celebrate garden innovation in England’s Northeast

England’s most famous gardens tend to be long-established. Sissinghurst, Hidcote and the famous planting schemes of Gertrude Jekyll have roots in the Edwardian era. Visitors flock to see landscapes designed and planted by the Georgians. At places with layered histories like Hampton Court, you can see gardens stretching back to the Tudors ... though the plants have been refreshed in modern times. English garden tourists are likely to tell you, with grave sincerity, that a really great garden needs many decades to sink its roots into the must visit list.

It’s quite a surprise, therefore, that the two most noteworthy gardens in England’s Northeast are newcomers. The Alnwick Garden (above) only opened its first phase in 2001, with its core complete less than 15 years ago. The RHS gardens at Harlow Carr are similarly young; though there had been gardens here for years, the RHS only took over the site and started its redevelopment in 2001. Both places, therefore, benefit from the kinds of conveniences many older gardens don’t have: ample parking and dining facilities, digital guides, modern shops and learning centres and adventurous approaches to design.

Given that the Royal Horticultural Society is best known for its flower shows at Chelsea and Hampton Court, where designers magically create pop-up show gardens that look like they’ve been in place for decades, I suppose it’s no surprise that Harlow Carr, just west of Harrogate, appears far more established than its years. The site is a long, gentle, rectangular valley, once the spa gardens for a now defunct hotel and later trial gardens for the Northern Horticultural Society. The topography means you can stroll along the brow of the hill where the entrance is located, looking down into most of the gardens and taking in long vistas without much exertion. This is unlike the main RHS garden at Wisley where, though there are grand spaces, they tend to be separated into more distinct sections by hedges or architecture. Harlow Carr serves up most of its delights in one extraordinary panorama. 

Those who know Wisley will find the main elements of its Northern sister familiar. There are deep, long perennial borders, alpine houses, rock gardens, demonstration fruit and vegetable sections, shade beds and an arboretum. I didn’t have time to explore it all, but I loved what I saw.

I have a theory that Northern gardeners like a brighter colour palette than Southerners ... perhaps building on a legacy of vivid Victorian annual beds in public parks that didn’t go out of fashion here as they did down South. Harlow Carr certainly supports my theory, particularly in its “sun border” planted meadow-style with poppies, cornflowers and other semi-wild favourites in a density that recalls the “mille fleurs” style of Medieval tapestries.

Elsewhere, abundant dahlias in bright purples, reds, yellows and oranges .... and shocking combinations thereof ... were often planted side-by-side with equally bold canna lilies, reinforcing a love of colour. Things are a little calmer along the stream that runs through the valley bottom, where my favourite section mixed hostas with a variety of Japanese maples. Though the palette was more muted, there was still a vast variety of leaf colour.

Like Wisley, this is a vast, diverse garden that would reward multiple visits. And like all RHS gardens this is a place for learning, full of interesting plants to inspire horticultural experimentation. Unlike Wisley, it’s also the home to branches of Harrogate’s famous Betty’s Tea Rooms, so you can break your wandering with a hot drink and one of Betty’s famous “fat rascals” purchased from a hut in a woodland dell at the far end of the valley. There’s also a full tea room and a take-away bakery counter outside the paid entry point, the former with views over some of the gardens, so there’s a shortcut for killing two Harrogate tourism birds with one stone.

The Alnwick Garden has less horticultural variety and less interest in its planting schemes, but is far showier in its hard landscaping. This is, fundamentally, a water garden, with an enormous cascade at its heart. Jets put on a Vegas-style “dancing waters” show roughly every half hour, with wide lawns at the bottom intended for families to lounge, picnic and watch the show. Children are encouraged to splash and paddle, whether in the corridor through the middle of the cascade where you’re never sure when plumes and jets will come on to drench you, or in gentler streams and fountains to the side and top of the cascade. Locals clearly know this and treat the garden like a water park, with cautious parents kitting their kids out in wellies and waterproofs while others let their progeny strip down to a bathing costume and get drenched.

I couldn’t help thinking with wry amusement of the Princess Diana memorial in Hyde Park, which was designed for children to play in its streams but changed its rules soon after opening due to Health and Safety fears. The Northerers are clearly made of sterner stuff.

This all provides for much spectacle and amusement, but it inevitably means that this isn’t a particularly calming garden. Even at the very top, in a walled garden divided into grids of different colours and plant types, where serious gardeners will find the greatest horticultural interest, you’ll also find children stomping down cobbled rills of flowing water and reacting with gleeful delight to the central water feature that bubbles intermittently, like a pond in a geyser field. 

Water features sprinkled around the garden all have different points of interest, from one that seems to drain like a sink from its centre to another that’s reminiscent of a giant water clock and sends jets up and out when its reservoir fills. Many of these are in, or led to by, towering walls of hedges that give much of the garden the feel of a giant maze.

Two areas offer a respite from aquatic merriment. There’s a large and diverse rose garden, dominated by David Austin varieties, planted in a spiralling pattern in a walled corner of the garden behind more screening hedges. It’s not at its best in August, though I enjoyed the secondary bloom on some varieties, highlighted by clematis planted throughout to add late summer colour. In late May and early June, however, it must be spectacular. 

The other “quiet” area is the poison garden, for which Alnwick is probably most famous.

Though the link isn’t made overtly, most people will associate the poison garden with the Harry Potter franchise and its potions classes, given that the neighbouring Alnwick Castle stood in for Hogwarts in the first two films. The concept stands on its own, however, and is a fascinating exploration of plants that can do harm. Many are obvious: there’s hemlock, henbane, monkshood, deadly nightshade and others that fans of Poirot, Miss Marple or Brother Cadfael will recognise as devious paths to murder. There’s also a wide variety of plants common to many gardens, and only dangerous if treated in certain ways or exposed to specific types of people (like pregnant women). These include rosemary, hellebores, foxgloves, lily of the valley and daffodils. Perhaps most interesting are the plants that can be used for medicinal purposes but are often abused to the detriment of our health, or lethal overdose. The coca plant, khat, hemp, marijuana, tobacco and the opium poppy all grow here, and are the focus of a local programme encouraging teenagers not to do drugs.

Access to the poison garden is limited, you’re not allowed to touch or smell anything and it’s small enough for the guides working there to keep an eye on everyone. The only negative? It’s not actually a very attractive garden. Many of these plants look like struggling weeds; or at least they did in August. The garden scores high on intellectual interest but low on visual appeal. 

Alnwick and Harlow Carr were created for two very different purposes, and they serve them beautifully. As the RHS anchor in the North, Harlow Carr carries on its organisation’s wider mission of education while giving members an HQ for horticultural events in the region. The current duchess of Northumberland created Alnwick (despite sceptical criticism) as a major tourist attraction that would draw visitors North and as a community garden with a variety of outreach programmes for locals. In both cases, it’s great to see England’s grand old tradition of gardening being used to bring new, fresh and exciting life to the areas these gardens beautify.