Scenic Point in County Durham

Hawes is the principal market town of upper Wensleydale in the Yorkshire Dales, a small but lively town whose combination of the famous Wensleydale Creamery, the excellent Dales Countryside Museum, the weekly Tuesday market and the superb walking available on the surrounding fells and dale makes it the most complete and most welcoming destination in the upper dale. The town provides the essential services for the walking and cycling visitors who use it as a base for the excellent accessible landscapes of upper Wensleydale and the connecting valleys. The Wensleydale Creamery in the centre of the town produces the crumbly white cheese associated with this dale since the twelfth century when the Cistercian monks of Jervaulx Abbey first made it from ewes' milk. The creamery is open to visitors and provides one of the most popular cheese-related visitor experiences in England, combining the working dairy with a shop, café and visitor interpretation in a format that has become a national model for artisan food tourism. The Hardraw Force, England's highest unbroken waterfall above ground at approximately 30 metres, is accessible through the pub garden of the Green Dragon Inn at Hardraw a short distance from Hawes, a combination of the finest waterfall in the Dales with an obligatory pub visit that appeals greatly to the walking visitor community. The combination of Hardraw and Hawes provides an excellent half-day in the upper dale.

Middleham in Wensleydale is a small market town in the Yorkshire Dales famous for its horse racing training tradition, the ruined Neville castle and the association with Richard III who spent much of his youth here as a ward of the Earl of Warwick. The combination of the castle history, the working racehorse training community visible on the moors each morning and the attractive market town character creates a destination of unusual variety in the lower Dales landscape. Middleham Castle, managed by English Heritage, was the principal residence of the Neville family and the place where the future Richard III grew up as a ward of the Kingmaker earl. The castle is one of the largest in Yorkshire and the surviving great keep, the gatehouse and various residential buildings provide excellent evidence of accommodation available to one of the most powerful noble families in medieval England. The racehorse training tradition at Middleham, established on the high gallops above the town since the early eighteenth century, makes the town one of the most important racing centres in northern England. The morning exercise of horses on the Middleham High Moor provides one of the most distinctive sights available in the Yorkshire Dales.

Reeth is the principal village of upper Swaledale in the Yorkshire Dales, a handsome settlement set around a large triangular green high above the River Swale whose combination of Georgian and earlier stone buildings, the views up and down the dale from the village green and its position at the meeting of Swaledale and Arkengarthdale make it the natural centre of the northern Yorkshire Dales and one of the finest Dales villages. The village provides the services and character of a genuine rural community that also accommodates the walkers, cyclists and visitors drawn to this exceptionally beautiful section of the national park. The Swaledale landscape above and below Reeth is among the finest traditional farming landscapes in Britain, the pattern of stone-walled hay meadows and pastures on the valley sides providing in summer one of the finest botanical spectacles in the Dales, the unimproved meadow flora of yellow rattle, wood cranesbill, melancholy thistle and numerous orchid species colouring the valley in ways that have all but disappeared from the lowland English countryside. The meadows of upper Swaledale are among the best preserved examples of traditional hay meadow management in Britain. The lead mining heritage of Swaledale is visible in the landscape above Reeth, where the heather moorland is pitted with the remains of mine shafts, smelt mills and the distinctive linear scars of the hushes, channels cut in the moorland to use water flow to expose ore-bearing rock. The Swaledale Museum in Reeth provides interpretation of the mining history and the wider cultural history of this remote but distinctive dale. The Coast to Coast walk passes through Reeth and the Pennine Journey route traverses the surrounding moorland, making it an excellent walking base.