Pictures:
Top - Great Ayton, birthplace of Captain Cook. Middle - Cottage at Thornton le Dale. Bottom - Sheep on moors.
The rugged North York Moors - 1
Travelling inland from the Yorkshire Coast brings you past the amusingly-named hill called Roseberry Topping to Great Ayton (96M), a pretty little village full of 18th century houses. Here Captain Cook spent his childhood, before training as a grocer and then going to sea. A statue of him as a child has been erected in the village.
To the South is the edge of the Yorkshire Moors – made famous by the James Herriott stories and the TV programme Heartbeat. Their natural beauty, remoteness and picturesque villages are complemented by castles at Pickering (75M) and Helmsley (87.5M), and ecclesiastical architecture at Rievaulx Abbey and Mount Grace Priory.
A short drive over the tops from the market town of Pickering or the picturesque village of Thornton-le-Dale with its thatched cottages (both around 75M) explains why the moors were designated a National Park as early as 1952. The rough bracken, the purple heather, the sheep and the rugged landscape all combine to make the moors so distinctive.
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