Scenic Point in West Yorkshire

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Skipton is the Gateway to the Yorkshire Dales, a market town of considerable character and historical importance at the southern edge of the Dales National Park whose combination of a fine medieval castle, a broad market street of considerable architectural quality, the canal basin of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal and the excellent transport connections into the surrounding Dales makes it one of the most rewarding and most used bases for exploring the national park. The town has served as a market centre for the surrounding Dales farming communities since the medieval period and retains the commercial vitality and the market tradition that give it an authentic town character. Skipton Castle, one of the most complete and best-preserved medieval castles in northern England, stands at the top of the High Street and is privately owned and open to visitors. The castle was originally built by Robert de Romille in the early twelfth century and developed subsequently by the Clifford family, who held it for over three centuries and whose rebuilding in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries created much of the fabric visible today. The castle withstood a three-year siege during the Civil War before surrendering on terms in 1645 and was subsequently repaired by the redoubtable Lady Anne Clifford, whose restoration work can be read in the yew tree she planted in the courtyard in 1659 that still grows in the same spot. The canal basin at the foot of the town provides an attractive focus for the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, the longest single canal in Britain, and the walking and cycling along the towpath into the Dales provides excellent access to the countryside immediately north of the town.