Attraction in North Yorkshire

Bempton Cliffs on the East Yorkshire coast near Bridlington are the most impressive seabird cliffs in England, a section of chalk coastline rising to over a hundred metres above the North Sea that supports the largest mainland gannet colony in England along with tens of thousands of guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes, fulmars, puffins and herring gulls breeding on the vertical chalk faces from April through August. The RSPB has managed the site since 1969 and the combination of accessible viewpoints, excellent visitor facilities and the sheer overwhelming abundance of breeding seabirds makes Bempton one of the most rewarding wildlife spectacles in Britain. The gannet colony at Bempton has grown dramatically over the past fifty years from a handful of pairs in the 1970s to several thousand pairs today, part of the general expansion of the British gannet population as the species recovers from historical persecution and finds new breeding sites along the British coastline. The gannets nest on the ledges and broad clifftop areas, their white plumage and distinctive black-tipped wings making them unmistakable even at a distance, and their aerial fishing displays in the sea below the cliffs provide continuous dramatic entertainment. The RSPB visitor centre provides excellent facilities including telescopes at the main viewpoints, interpretive displays explaining the seabird colony and its ecology, and guided walks during the breeding season. The six viewpoints along the clifftop path provide different perspectives on the colony, with some viewpoints looking directly into the most densely occupied sections of cliff at very short range. The noise, smell and sheer visual intensity of a hundred thousand seabirds in full breeding activity is one of the great wildlife experiences that Britain offers. Outside the seabird season Bempton is also excellent for watching migrant passerine birds in spring and autumn, when the sheltered scrub along the clifftop provides cover for tired migrants arriving from the continent.

Beningbrough Hall is an outstanding early Georgian country house in North Yorkshire set within its own parkland beside the River Ouse between York and Boroughbridge. Built in the early eighteenth century, the house is considered one of the finest examples of baroque domestic architecture in the north of England, combining an impressive exterior of warm red brick with state rooms of exceptional quality and decorative richness. The National Trust has managed the hall since 1958 and in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery displays over a hundred portrait paintings from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in the house's principal rooms, creating a visitor experience that combines architectural appreciation with a significant art collection. The exterior of the house presents a dignified and carefully proportioned facade to the courtyard and garden, the red brick warm against the North Yorkshire sky and the baroque architectural details of the window surrounds, cornices and central doorcase executed with a quality and confidence that speaks to a skilled architect at the height of his abilities. The building has been attributed to William Thornton of York, a talented provincial architect who produced work of metropolitan quality for several Yorkshire patrons in the early years of the eighteenth century. The state rooms within the hall are among the finest of their period in the north of England. The great hall rising to the full height of the building, the carved staircase with its elaborate painted decoration, the state bed, the Chinese closet and the beautifully proportioned drawing rooms all demonstrate the high standard of craftsmanship available to wealthy Yorkshire patrons in the early Georgian period. The collection of National Portrait Gallery paintings, displayed in appropriate period settings, extends the experience from purely architectural appreciation into the history of British art and society across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The formal garden, parkland walks and walled garden provide substantial outdoor interest, and the combination of house, garden and riverside setting makes Beningbrough a very satisfying full-day destination.

Brimham Rocks in the Nidderdale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty near Harrogate are one of the most extraordinary natural rock formations in England, a collection of millstone grit tors weathered by wind and rain over millions of years into fantastical shapes that balance enormous masses of rock on improbably narrow bases and create natural sculptures of considerable comic and dramatic variety. The National Trust manages the site and the rocks, each named for the object they resemble, attract visitors who combine the pleasure of scrambling and exploring with the astonishment that natural erosion can produce these results. The rocks are the remnants of a continuous layer of Millstone Grit that once covered this section of the Pennines and has been progressively eroded over the millions of years since the Carboniferous period, the erosion acting most aggressively on the softer bands within the rock and creating the characteristic shapes of balanced rocks, arches and vertical columns. The names given to the most distinctive formations, including the Idol Rock, the Druid's Writing Desk, the Dancing Bear and the Watchdog, reflect centuries of imaginative human response to these improbable natural forms. The moorland setting of Brimham Rocks, with the open heather moor stretching to the Nidderdale valley below and the Yorkshire Dales visible in the distance, provides an excellent landscape context for the rock formations and the combination of the rocks, the moorland walking and the views makes Brimham one of the most rewarding half-day destinations in the Yorkshire countryside.

Flamingo Land Yorkshire is a destination that rewards visitors who enjoy discovering remarkable scenery away from the busiest tourist crowds. The atmosphere can shift dramatically depending on the weather, with bright sunlight revealing colours and textures that are easy to miss on overcast days. Local walking routes and nearby viewpoints make it a rewarding place to explore on foot. Even during busier periods there are usually quieter corners where the scenery can be appreciated at a slower pace. The surrounding landscape provides a strong sense of place that helps visitors understand the character of the region. The surrounding landscape changes beautifully with the seasons, giving the location a slightly different character throughout the year. Photographers often appreciate the changing light conditions, particularly during sunrise and sunset. The location works particularly well as part of a wider scenic journey through the region. Visitors often find themselves spending far longer here than expected because the scenery invites slow exploration. Wandering around the area reveals small details that are easily missed when simply passing through. Many visitors return repeatedly because each visit offers something slightly different. For travellers building an itinerary, Flamingo Land Yorkshire works well as a memorable stop between larger destinations.

Fountains Abbey in the valley of the River Skell in North Yorkshire is the largest and most complete ruined monastery in Britain, a Cistercian abbey of enormous scale and architectural ambition whose remains, together with the eighteenth-century water gardens of Studley Royal Park that surround them, form a UNESCO World Heritage Site and one of the outstanding heritage landscapes in England. The extent and quality of the surviving fabric give an impression of medieval monastic life and architecture that is unmatched anywhere else in the British Isles. The abbey was founded in 1132 by a group of thirteen monks who left St Mary's Abbey in York following a dispute about the strictness of monastic observance and settled in this remote valley with the support of the Archbishop of York. From these desperate beginnings, sheltering under a great elm tree in winter before the first stone buildings were constructed, Fountains grew within a century to become the wealthiest Cistercian house in England, its prosperity sustained by vast sheep flocks grazing the uplands of Yorkshire and the wool trade they supported. That extraordinary wealth is written in the quality and scale of the surviving ruins. The eleven-bay nave of the abbey church, the great tower added in the sixteenth century, the vaulted cellarium providing storage for the lay brothers who worked the abbey's farms and granges, and the complete range of monastic buildings including the chapter house, infirmary and guest houses together constitute the most complete suite of Cistercian monastic buildings surviving anywhere in the world. The Studley Royal water garden, created in the eighteenth century and incorporating the abbey ruins as a picturesque landscape feature, completes an ensemble of extraordinary richness.

Fountains Abbey and Studley Royal Water Garden near Ripon in North Yorkshire is a UNESCO World Heritage Site combining the largest and most complete Cistercian abbey ruins in Britain with one of the finest and most innovative eighteenth-century landscape gardens in the world, a combination of medieval monastic grandeur and Georgian landscape design that together create a heritage experience of exceptional breadth and quality. The National Trust manages the entire site and the combination of the abbey ruins, the water garden and the Deer Park provides one of the most comprehensive heritage and landscape experiences available in the north of England. The Cistercian abbey of Fountains, founded in 1132 and dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539, grew over four centuries into one of the wealthiest monasteries in England, its extensive agricultural estate extending across much of the West Riding of Yorkshire in a business empire that provided the resources for the enormous building programme visible in the ruins. The surviving buildings, including the great nave of the abbey church, the cellarium and the remarkable fifteenth-century tower of Abbot Huby, represent the most complete picture of a major English Cistercian monastery available anywhere. The eighteenth-century water garden created by John Aislabie in the valley below the abbey is one of the most accomplished examples of formal landscape design in England, its series of geometric canals and ponds, the Temple of Piety and the surprise view of the abbey from the crescent pond providing a sequence of composed views of remarkable quality.

How Stean Gorge near Lofthouse in Nidderdale is one of the most dramatic and most accessible limestone gorge experiences in the Yorkshire Dales, a narrow ravine approximately 24 metres deep cut by How Stean Beck through the Great Scar Limestone in a system of pools, waterfalls and underground passages that provides an excellent combination of outdoor adventure and natural heritage interest. The gorge is managed privately and provides a range of ways of experiencing the gorge from the easy pathway along the gorge floor to the underground cave sections and the more athletic climbing and via ferrata routes for those seeking more challenging engagement. The gorge was carved by the erosive action of How Stean Beck cutting down through the limestone over thousands of years since the last Ice Age, the resistant limestone creating the near-vertical walls and narrow channel that give the gorge its dramatic character. The combination of the water running through the gorge floor, the overhanging limestone walls, the cave passages and the vegetation on the ledges above creates an enclosed, atmospheric world quite different from the open Dale above. The café at the gorge entrance and the range of activities available, including guided cave tours through Tom Taylor's Cave and the outdoor adventure activities on the gorge walls, make How Stean one of the most popular outdoor activity destinations in Nidderdale and an excellent wet-weather alternative to the open moor walking of the surrounding area.

The Jorvik Viking Centre in York is one of the most visited and most celebrated heritage attractions in Britain, a museum built over the site of the Coppergate Viking excavations of 1976 to 1981 that uncovered the most complete and most remarkably preserved Viking settlement in the world, with organic material including wood, leather, textiles and foodstuffs preserved in the anaerobic conditions of the waterlogged York ground in a quality impossible in most archaeological sites. The museum provides an immersive recreation of the Viking Age city of Jorvik in a format that has become a model for experiential archaeology. The Coppergate excavations uncovered the complete plan of a Viking street of the tenth century, with the timber-framed buildings of workshops, houses and the domestic rubbish that preserved the organic evidence of daily life in the anaerobic conditions. The quality of preservation was quite extraordinary, including leather shoes, carved wooden objects, woollen textiles and even the contents of cesspits that revealed the diet, parasites and household waste of the Viking community. The museum uses a ride-through reconstruction of the excavated Viking street, with reconstructed buildings, life-size figures and the smells of a tenth-century city, to create an immersive experience of the Viking settlement that has been continuously updated since the museum opened in 1984. The archaeological finds themselves are displayed in the museum in a collection that represents the finest single assemblage of Viking material culture from any British site.

Rievaulx Abbey in the North York Moors is one of the finest ruined monasteries in Britain, a Cistercian abbey of exceptional scale and architectural quality set in the deep, wooded valley of the River Rye whose combination of the soaring Gothic choir walls surviving to remarkable height and the romantic landscape of the surrounding valley provides one of the most atmospheric and most beautiful of all English monastic ruins. English Heritage manages the site, and the adjacent Rievaulx Terrace, a National Trust landscape garden above the valley designed to provide framed views down into the abbey from theatrical perspectives, completes an experience of extraordinary quality. The abbey was founded in 1132 as the first Cistercian house in the north of England, established by a group of monks from the great Cistercian mother house of Clairvaux in France who chose the remote Rye valley for its combination of seclusion, water supply and building stone. Under Aelred, who was abbot from 1147 to 1167 and became one of the most celebrated spiritual writers of the medieval church, the community grew to over 140 monks and 500 lay brothers, one of the largest Cistercian houses in Europe and a centre of spiritual and intellectual life of international reputation. The remaining fabric reflects the enormous investment in building that the community's prosperity in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries sustained. The choir and presbytery of the abbey church, the most complete section of the ruins, rise to magnificent height in the Early English Gothic style and provide walls and piers of exceptional quality whose survival communicates the scale of the original building with considerable power. The chapter house, the refectory undercroft and the infirmary add further dimension to a site of great architectural richness.

Ripon Cathedral is one of the oldest and most historically significant churches in England, a cathedral of great architectural variety and interest whose origins in a monastic community founded by St Wilfrid in the seventh century make it one of the earliest sites of Christian continuity in the north of England. The crypt beneath the current cathedral, built by Wilfrid around 672 and used as a pilgrimage destination associated with the saint's relics, is one of the oldest complete Anglo-Saxon structures surviving in Britain and an extraordinary link to the earliest history of English Christianity. The cathedral's architectural development spans over thirteen centuries, from the Saxon crypt through the Norman west front and nave to the Early English Gothic choir, the Decorated crossing tower and the Victorian restorations that gave the building much of its current appearance. This layering of architectural history, unusual even among English cathedrals, reflects the continuous importance of Ripon as a religious site and the sustained investment in building that importance generated across the centuries. The city of Ripon itself is one of the most attractive small cities in Yorkshire, its cathedral the dominant feature of a compact city centre with a fine market square, medieval street pattern and the notable addition of the Ripon Workhouse Museum and the Prison and Police Museum in the surviving courthouse building, the latter providing an excellent account of the development of Victorian criminal justice and penal reform. The three museums together create an unusually comprehensive picture of Georgian and Victorian English institutional and social history. The blowing of the Wakeman's Horn in the market place at nine o'clock every evening, a tradition maintained continuously since the medieval period as a practical public service, is a living connection to the town's medieval governance that has survived through all the changes of the intervening centuries.

Stump Cross Caverns near Grassington in the Yorkshire Dales is a show cave of considerable scientific and visual interest, a system of limestone caverns formed over the past two million years that was discovered in 1858 by lead miners and has been open to the public since 1860. The cave contains fine examples of stalagmites, stalactites and other cave formations, and fossil bones of Pleistocene animals found within the cave have provided important evidence of Ice Age wildlife in Britain. Approximately 700 metres of the system are open to the public as a guided show cave experience. The formations represent examples of the main speleothem types including stalactites, stalagmites, flowstone and cave pearls, their variable colours resulting from different mineral impurities deposited by dripping water over hundreds of thousands of years. The Pleistocene animal remains found in the cave include wolves, reindeer, wolverines and bison, deposited during warmer interglacial periods when these species ranged across the Yorkshire Dales. The Dales landscape above the cave provides excellent walking and the nearby Grassington village is the principal centre of upper Wharfedale, making Stump Cross a rewarding stop on any visit to the northern Dales.

Whitby Abbey stands on the East Cliff above the Yorkshire fishing town of Whitby in a position of extraordinary drama, its Gothic ruins silhouetted against the North Sea sky in a profile that has been one of the defining images of the Yorkshire coast since the Romantic period and which inspired Bram Stoker during his stay in Whitby in 1890 to place scenes from Dracula in the town and abbey, creating an association that has brought a particular kind of Gothic-minded visitor to Whitby ever since. The abbey was one of the most important religious sites in early medieval England and its ruins, managed by English Heritage, are among the finest in Yorkshire. The original monastery at Whitby was founded in 657 by St Hilda, the remarkable Abbess of exceptional authority who presided over a double monastery of both men and women and was the host of the Synod of Whitby in 664, one of the most important events in the history of the English church, at which the Roman and Celtic traditions of Christianity debated and resolved their differences over the date of Easter and the form of the monastic tonsure. The synod's decision in favour of the Roman tradition aligned the English church with continental Christianity and was a decisive moment in the history of Christian Europe. The current ruins are those of the later Benedictine abbey founded in the eleventh century on the site of the earlier monastery, built in the Early English and later Gothic styles that provide the soaring pointed arches and tall windows that create the dramatic silhouette above the town. The ruins retain considerable height in the east end and north wall of the nave and give a powerful impression of the abbey's original scale and architectural ambition. The combination of the abbey, the old town below with its 199 steps, the Dracula association and the fishing harbour make Whitby one of the most characterful and most visited small towns on the English east coast.