Things to do in West Yorkshire

Bolton Abbey in the Yorkshire Dales is a ruined Augustinian priory of exceptional beauty set in a wooded valley of the River Wharfe, one of the most beautiful and most visited heritage landscapes in the north of England. The priory was established in 1154 and developed over the following centuries into a substantial monastic complex before its suppression by Henry VIII in 1539. The nave of the priory church survived the Dissolution and remains in use as the parish church of the local community, while the remaining conventual buildings are preserved as ruins within the parkland of the Devonshire estate. The setting of Bolton Abbey is the principal reason for its status as one of the great visitor attractions of the Dales. The River Wharfe curves through a wide wooded valley below the priory buildings, and the combination of the romantic ruined arches of the east end of the priory church, the sound of the river, the mature woodland of oak and beech on the valley sides and the open moorland visible above creates a landscape of which successive generations of British visitors, from the early Romantic tourists of the eighteenth century to the present day, have never tired. Turner, Landseer and Ruskin all painted or sketched at Bolton Abbey, and the combination of natural beauty and historical association that drew them continues to draw half a million visitors annually. The Strid, a dramatic natural feature a short walk upstream from the priory, is where the full volume of the Wharfe is compressed through a narrow gorge of water-smoothed limestone, the dark water churning through the rock channel with a force that is immediately and viscerally dangerous despite the apparent narrowness of the crossing. The Strid has claimed many lives over the centuries and its reputation for lethal deceptiveness is thoroughly deserved: the channel is far deeper than it appears and the walls beneath the surface are deeply undercut. The Bolton Abbey estate, owned by the Devonshire family since 1753, includes extensive walking trails, the Cavendish Pavilion restaurant and café, and the atmospheric single-carriage Embsay and Bolton Abbey steam railway.

The Bolton Abbey Estate in Wharfedale, North Yorkshire, encompasses one of the most beautiful and historically rich landscape combinations in England, a 30,000-acre country estate owned by the Duke of Devonshire that includes the celebrated Augustinian priory ruins, the River Wharfe and its gorge, extensive heather moorland, ancient woodland and the wide, pastoral valley of Wharfedale. The estate has been welcoming visitors since the Victorian period and continues to draw around half a million people annually to experience a landscape that has inspired artists, writers and walkers for generations. The priory ruins at the heart of the estate, established in 1154 and dissolved in 1539, occupy a meadow above a bend in the Wharfe in a setting of exceptional natural beauty. The nave of the priory church survived the Dissolution and continues in use as the parish church of the village, while the spectacular ruins of the east end and the conventual buildings provide one of the most romantic abbery landscapes in England. The view of the ruins from across the river, with the woods rising behind and the sound of the Wharfe nearby, is one that has been painted many times. The Strid, a short but spectacular walk upstream from the priory, is where the full volume of the River Wharfe is compressed through a narrow rock gorge of deceptive depth and lethal unpredictability. The contrast between the calm river above and below the Strid and the churning power of the water within the gorge is immediately and viscerally apparent, and the history of deaths in this small section of river over many centuries reflects the genuine danger of the current beneath the narrow crossing points. The moorland section of the estate above the valley is managed primarily for driven grouse shooting but is traversed by excellent footpaths and provides walking of considerable quality with views over Wharfedale and the surrounding Dales landscape.

Gaping Gill on the slopes of Ingleborough in the Yorkshire Dales is the largest natural cavern in Britain, a pothole shaft approximately 110 metres deep into which the Fell Beck stream plunges in a free-falling waterfall that is the highest unbroken waterfall in England. The pothole is descended by experienced cavers using rope techniques and twice yearly, during the Whitsun and August bank holiday weekends, the Bradford Pothole Club and the Craven Pothole Club erect winch gear on the surface that allows members of the public to be lowered to the cavern floor in a bosun's chair, one of the most extraordinary adventure activities available in the Yorkshire Dales. The cavern at the base of the shaft is of enormous size, approximately 150 metres long and 30 metres wide, large enough to contain York Minster in its interior. The falls of Fell Beck entering through the shaft opening above create a spectacular light effect in the chamber during the hours when sunlight enters the shaft, the waterfall catching the light in a display of considerable drama. The stream continues underground from the cavern floor through a complex of passages to emerge eventually at the Ingleborough Cave show cave near Clapham. The winch meet experience, during which members of the public can be lowered to the cavern floor and spend a few minutes in this extraordinary underground space, is one of the most memorable and most unusual outdoor activities available in Britain, combining the height of the descent, the darkness of the cavern and the sight of the waterfall entering from above in an experience quite unlike anything available at the surface.

Gordale Scar near Malham in the Yorkshire Dales is one of the most dramatic natural rock formations in England, a vast overhanging gorge cut into the Great Scar Limestone by the combined action of glacial meltwater and subsequent river erosion that creates a theatrical amphitheatre of vertical and overhanging limestone walls up to 100 metres high through which a waterfall tumbles in a composition of geological drama unsurpassed anywhere in the Pennines. The scar has been a destination for Romantic tourists since the late eighteenth century and was painted by Turner in a composition of savage grandeur. The approach through the increasingly narrow limestone gorge, with the walls rising above on both sides until they overhang and almost touch above the path, creates one of the finest natural approach sequences available at any natural heritage site in Britain. The moment at which the full extent of the scar opens ahead, with the waterfall tumbling through the rocks in the inner gorge and the overhanging walls framing the sky above, is one of the most dramatic natural reveals available in the Yorkshire Dales. The waterfall in the inner gorge is climbed by experienced walkers as a scramble route giving access to the limestone plateau above and the Malham Tarn country beyond, one of the classic short adventure walks of the Yorkshire Dales. The combination of Gordale Scar with the nearby Malham Cove and Malham Tarn, all accessible within a few hours of walking from Malham village, creates one of the finest limestone landscape excursions available in the national park.

Grassington is the principal village and the visitor hub of upper Wharfedale in the Yorkshire Dales National Park, a stone-built market town of considerable charm whose cobbled market square, independent shops, cafes and the excellent access it provides to the Dales landscape in every direction make it one of the most rewarding and most welcoming bases for exploring the central Yorkshire Dales. The combination of the village character, the Dales scenery immediately accessible from the village and the walking available on the surrounding limestone country creates one of the most complete small town visitor experiences in the national park. The Wharfedale landscape around Grassington provides walking of exceptional variety, from the riverside path along the Wharfe through Bolton Abbey to the south to the high limestone country of Grass Wood and the moors above Kilnsey Crag to the north. The Dales Way long-distance walking route passes through Grassington and the combination of the waymarked long-distance route and the extensive network of footpaths across the surrounding limestone plateau makes the village the starting point for an almost unlimited variety of walking excursions. The former lead mining heritage of the Grassington Moor above the village, whose extensive field systems of mine shafts, smelt mill chimneys and spoil heaps provide one of the finest examples of a Dales lead mining landscape, adds an industrial heritage dimension to what is primarily a landscape and village tourism destination.

Hardcastle Crags near Hebden Bridge in the South Pennines is a wooded valley of exceptional beauty managed by the National Trust, a deep gill in the gritstone moorland above the Calder Valley whose combination of the ancient sessile oak woodland, the tumbling stream, the Victorian mill buildings and the moorland landscape above creates one of the most atmospheric and most rewarding walking destinations in West Yorkshire. The valley is locally known as Little Switzerland for the alpine quality of its wooded valley scenery, a comparison that flatters Yorkshire but captures something of the dramatic contained character of this gritstone gorge. The National Trust woodland of Hardcastle Crags is one of the finest examples of ancient sessile oak woodland in the South Pennines, the damp, sheltered conditions of the gill providing the Atlantic oceanic woodland habitat that supports a rich community of mosses, liverworts, ferns and the characteristic woodland flowers of ancient broadleaved woodland. The wood anemones and bluebells of spring and the rich colours of the autumn beech provide the finest seasonal displays. The combination of Hardcastle Crags with the literary heritage of Hebden Bridge below, whose association with Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath and the contemporary creative community that has made it one of the most culturally vibrant small towns in Yorkshire, provides an excellent framework for a day in the Calder Valley that combines natural beauty with cultural richness.

Haworth in the West Yorkshire Pennines is the home of the Brontë family, the village where Charlotte, Emily and Anne Brontë lived at the parsonage with their father Patrick throughout most of their adult lives and wrote the novels that have made them the most celebrated literary sisters in English literature. The Brontë Parsonage Museum, the village and the moorland above provide one of the most completely realised literary pilgrimage experiences available in Britain, the combination of the preserved domestic space where the novels were written and the Pennine moorland that inspired them creating an encounter with literary heritage of exceptional power. The parsonage, now managed by the Brontë Society as a museum, has been preserved with extraordinary care in the condition of the Brontë period, the furniture, domestic objects and personal belongings of the family creating an intimate and immediate connection to the domestic life of the three sisters. The small dining room where the sisters read and discussed their work in the evenings, the study where Patrick Brontë wrote and the bedrooms where illness eventually claimed all three daughters provide the physical context for one of the most creative family environments in the history of English literature. The moorland above Haworth, the landscape of Wuthering Heights and the freedom that the sisters found in the open country beyond their domestic confinement, is accessible within minutes of the parsonage and the walk across the moor to the ruined Top Withins farmhouse traditionally associated with the Earnshaw's farm provides one of the most charged literary heritage walks in England.

Hebden Bridge in the Calder Valley of West Yorkshire is one of the most culturally vibrant and most individually characterful small towns in northern England, a former mill town revived since the 1970s by an influx of artists, writers and alternative communities who have created a town of unusual creative energy in the dramatic landscape of the gritstone Pennine valleys. The combination of the Victorian mill town architecture, the creative and independent business culture, the excellent independent shops and restaurants and the beautiful walking available on the surrounding moorland and in Hardcastle Crags creates one of the most rewarding small town experiences in Yorkshire. The town grew in the nineteenth century as a centre of the textile industry, its position at the confluence of several Calder Valley tributaries providing the water power and the transport links needed for the woollen mills that filled the valley floor. The decline of the textile industry left the town economically depressed but architecturally intact, the survival of the Victorian mill buildings and terrace housing providing the physical framework for the subsequent creative regeneration. The literary heritage of the area is considerable, Ted Hughes having been born at Mytholmroyd immediately below Hebden Bridge and Sylvia Plath having been buried in Heptonstall churchyard above. The walking from Hebden Bridge through Hardcastle Crags to Haworth across the moor provides one of the most culturally rich walking routes in northern England, traversing the landscape of two of the most celebrated literary associations in Yorkshire.

Ilkley Moor above the spa town of Ilkley in West Yorkshire is one of the most famous open moors in England, immortalised in the song On Ilkla Moor Baht 'at which has become the unofficial anthem of Yorkshire, a heather and gritstone moorland of Rombalds Moor rising above the Wharfe Valley that provides excellent walking in the characteristic Dark Peak upland tradition with extensive views of Wharfedale and the surrounding hills. The combination of the moorland walking, the Bronze Age rock carvings, the Victorian spa town below and the views create one of the most rewarding urban fringe moorland destinations in northern England. The Bronze Age cup and ring carvings of the Cow and Calf Rocks and the surrounding moorland at Ilkley represent one of the densest concentrations of prehistoric rock art in northern England, the carved spirals, cups and rings on the gritstone outcrops providing evidence of the ritual landscape that covered this moorland in the second millennium BC. The Twelve Apostles stone circle and various other prehistoric features add to the archaeological interest of the moor. The Victorian spa town of Ilkley below the moor provides excellent cafes, restaurants and visitor facilities that make it an ideal base for moorland walking, and the combination of the spa town character and the wild moor immediately above creates one of the most complete experiences of the contrast between Victorian English tourism culture and the wild Pennine landscape that surrounded and inspired it.

Kirkstall Abbey on the western edge of Leeds is one of the finest and most complete Cistercian abbey ruins in England, a twelfth-century monastery whose roofless but substantially intact church, cloister buildings and gatehouse survive in remarkable condition alongside the River Aire in a setting that preserves something of the rural character the monks sought when they chose this site in 1152. The abbey is managed by Leeds City Council and is freely accessible to the public, making it one of the most generously available medieval heritage sites in the north of England. The abbey was founded by monks from Fountains Abbey in North Yorkshire, the great Cistercian mother house, and the family connection is visible in the architecture, which follows the same austere Early English style that characterises Cistercian building across the north of England. The church, though roofless, retains its west front, nave, transepts and tower in a state of preservation that allows the quality and ambition of the original building to be read clearly. The cloister buildings to the south of the church, including the chapter house, refectory and warming house, provide an unusually complete picture of how the domestic arrangements of a Cistercian monastery were organised. The abbey's later history includes dissolution by Henry VIII in 1539, a period of use as a quarry for building stone, and a gradual transition from ruin to civic heritage site as the industrial city of Leeds grew up around it. The Abbey House Museum in the gatehouse provides interpretation of the abbey's history and the social history of the surrounding area, and the Kirkstall riverside walk connects the abbey with the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the River Aire green corridor. The scale and completeness of Kirkstall, together with its free admission and urban accessibility, make it one of the most democratic heritage experiences in the north of England.

The Royal Armouries Museum in Leeds is one of the oldest museums in Britain and houses one of the world's most significant collections of arms, armour and artillery. Although its roots lie in the Tower of London where successive monarchs accumulated weapons and armour over centuries, the Leeds museum that opened in 1996 brought much of this collection to a purpose-built home in the city's revitalised waterfront district and created a world-class visitor experience that attracts hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. The collection spans five themed galleries: War, Tournament, Oriental, Self Defence and Hunting. The War gallery contains armour and weapons from across more than five centuries of European and global conflict, from medieval plate armour to seventeenth-century firearms and beyond. The scale of some individual pieces is astonishing: complete sets of armour made for Henry VIII, who was a substantial figure even by modern standards, illustrate the extraordinary craftsmanship of Tudor court armouries. Jousting armour, with its asymmetrical reinforcement and carefully designed lances, reveals the technical sophistication that lay behind what might appear to be straightforward sporting combat. The Tournament gallery celebrates the medieval and Renaissance tournament as a complex social and athletic phenomenon. Live interpretation events staged regularly in the museum's indoor performance area include jousting demonstrations, falconry displays and costumed interpretation that bring the collection to life. The Hunting gallery explores the history of the chase from prehistoric spears to eighteenth-century sporting firearms, with material ranging from Indian elephant howdahs to the bows that helped win the Battle of Agincourt. The Oriental gallery is one of the finest collections of Asian armour and weapons in the world, including Japanese samurai armour of exquisite quality and craftsmanship, Mughal Indian arms and armour, and weapons from across the Ottoman Empire. The diversity of materials, techniques and aesthetic traditions represented here provides a genuinely global perspective on the history of arms and armour. Entry to the Royal Armouries is free, making it one of the best value cultural attractions in the north of England. The museum's café and retail spaces are of good quality, and the riverside setting in Leeds Dock allows visitors to combine a museum visit with a walk along the regenerated waterfront.

Malham Cove in the Yorkshire Dales is one of the most dramatic natural features in England, a curved limestone cliff 80 metres high and approximately 300 metres wide that was formed as a waterfall at the end of the last Ice Age when meltwater cascading over the limestone edge of the Craven fault created the massive curved face visible today. The stream that once fell over the lip of the cove now disappears underground at the top of the cliff and re-emerges at the base through the cave system within the limestone, and the dry cliff face and the limestone pavement at its summit create a landscape of stark and powerful beauty that is entirely unlike the pastoral character of the surrounding Dales. The limestone pavement at the top of the cove is one of the finest examples in Britain, its surface of large flat slabs called clints, separated by deep fissures called grykes, extending for some distance back from the cliff edge. The grykes provide a sheltered and humid microclimate in which ferns, rare limestoneloving plants and wood-land species grow in conditions quite different from the exposed pavement surface, creating a botanical diversity compressed into a small area. The pavement is a protected landscape feature and walking on it is permitted only on designated routes. The approach to Malham Cove from the village of Malham follows the dry valley of Malham Beck through classic Yorkshire Dales limestone scenery, and the cliff face itself provides a high-quality rock climbing venue whose routes include some of the finest limestone climbs in the north of England. The natural amphitheatre formed by the curved cliff concentrates sound and creates a particular acoustic quality noticeable even in moderate wind conditions. The broader Malham landscape, including Malham Tarn above and Gordale Scar nearby, provides one of the most concentrated collections of outstanding limestone features available within a single short walking circuit in Britain.

Malham Tarn is an extraordinary natural feature of the Yorkshire Dales, the highest natural lake in England, lying at over 380 metres above sea level in a limestone landscape of exceptional geological interest. The tarn and its surrounding environment form a National Nature Reserve and a Site of Special Scientific Interest, protected for both its ecology and its unusual geological situation. What makes Malham Tarn particularly unusual is its very existence. Limestone is a porous rock through which water typically drains quickly rather than forming permanent lakes. The tarn exists because it sits above an impermeable layer of Silurian slate at the bottom of a glacially scoured basin, trapped by a geological fault that juxtaposes the permeable limestone with rock that holds water. The surrounding limestone landscape drained rapidly after the last Ice Age, leaving behind a patchwork of dry valleys, limestone pavements and springs that makes the Malham area one of the finest karst landscapes in Britain. The tarn and surrounding fen, marsh and calcareous grassland support an outstanding range of wildlife. The fen community in particular contains plant species associated with the high calcium levels produced by the limestone bedrock, including rare sedge communities and wetland plants that have become scarce across much of northern England. The tarn itself supports breeding populations of several water birds and is an important feeding site for migratory species. The field study centre on the tarn shore, established in 1947, has been a base for ecological research and environmental education for more than 70 years. The landscape around Malham Tarn can be explored as part of the Malham circular walk, one of the most popular and rewarding day walks in the Yorkshire Dales. The full circuit takes in not only the tarn but also the spectacular Malham Cove, a curving limestone cliff 80 metres high with an extensive limestone pavement at its summit, and Gordale Scar, a dramatic limestone gorge with two waterfalls that can be climbed with care in dry conditions. The combination of dramatic geology, clear walking paths and the varied scenery between these features makes the Malham area one of the best day walking destinations in northern England.

Saltaire is a Victorian model industrial village in the Aire Valley near Bradford in West Yorkshire, a UNESCO World Heritage Site built between 1851 and 1876 by the mill owner Titus Salt as a planned community for the workers of his enormous alpaca and wool textile mill on the River Aire. Salt's ambition was to create a working community with housing, education, recreation and cultural facilities of a standard far above the norm for Victorian industrial workers, and the resulting village of 820 terraced houses, schools, a Congregational church, almshouses, a hospital and the Institute for recreation and education provides one of the most complete surviving examples of Victorian philanthropic urban planning in the world. The mill itself, Salt's Mill, was the largest building in the world when completed in 1853, a six-storey Italianate palace of wool manufacturing on the banks of the Aire whose scale and architectural ambition expressed Salt's belief that industry could be conducted with dignity and beauty as well as efficiency. The mill ceased textile production in 1986 and has been transformed since then into a complex of galleries, restaurants and businesses of which the principal tenant is the 1853 Gallery, housing the largest single collection of works by the Bradford-born artist David Hockney outside Los Angeles. The combination of the Victorian mill architecture and Hockney's vivid contemporary paintings creates an unexpected but highly effective juxtaposition. The village streets, built on a grid pattern and named after Salt's family and the countries with which he traded, retain their original architecture in a remarkable state of completeness and provide an excellent example of how high-quality Victorian urban design creates an environment of lasting value.

Settle is one of the most attractive and most characterful small market towns in the Yorkshire Dales, a limestone town at the southern edge of the Dales National Park below the dramatic face of Castleberg Crag that serves as the market centre for a wide area of south Ribblesdale and the surrounding dales. The combination of the townscape of seventeenth and eighteenth-century limestone buildings, the remarkable Victorian Folly building in the market square, the dramatic cliff scenery above the town and the position on both the Settle to Carlisle Railway and the Ribble Way walking route makes Settle one of the most rewarding small towns in the national park. The market square is the heart of Settle, its market cross and the famous Folly building of 1679, a three-storey limestone house of extraordinary decorative ambition with carved stone figures in niches above the first-floor windows, creating a townscape focus of considerable character. The Folly was built by a local businessman whose financial difficulties in completing the building gave it the name by which it has been known ever since, and the building's confident eccentricity is entirely appropriate to a town whose limestone architecture and Dales character combine tradition and individuality. The Settle to Carlisle Railway, one of the most scenic and most celebrated railway lines in England, passes through Settle station as its southern terminus and provides the starting point for journeys through the Dales that take in the spectacular Ribblehead Viaduct and the high Pennine moorland before descending to the Eden Valley. The railway's survival after its proposed closure in the 1980s was secured by one of the most successful heritage railway campaigns in British history.