A Day Driving Through The Yorkshire Dales: Highlights Of A One Day Road Trip

There are many places around the UK that I have completely overlooked. It’s not that I don’t want to spend time in my home country – far from it; look at how much I explore Scotland. But truthfully, it takes time to explore the UK. Cornwall is a nine hour drive from us, and we are almost on the border with England. It’s a fourteen hour drive from the top of Scotland. And frankly, sometimes it doesn’t feel like it would be worth the travel time – in the USA, if you drive for nine hours, you’re surrounded by completely different scenery, and it can almost be like visiting a new country in itself.

It’s a shame though, because the UK has so many brilliant destinations. I’ve been to most of the cities, whether it’s visiting friends or going to gigs, but I’ve really managed to overlook all the national parks.

The problem is that I’d rather take a two hour flight to somewhere in Europe, to see a different culture or good weather or beautiful architecture for a weekend, than have to spend a night somewhere en route just to get somewhere else in the UK and then take time off work.

However, a couple of months ago, I celebrated my birthday with my sisters, which is rare as we didn’t spend much time together when I was growing up. They’re much older than me, so they spent the nineties living it up in Manchester while I grew up in Orkney, hundreds of miles and a boat ride away.

And a fun fact: one of them actually has the same birthday as me! I bet she was annoyed when I came along and stole her thunder. It was a big birthday for her this year, so we headed down to Manchester to see her, which was great fun.

Rather than heading straight back up the motorway, we decided to break up the journey by exploring the Yorkshire Dales, a national park close enough to us that it seems mad that we haven’t been there yet.

It goes without saying that you could spend several days in the Yorkshire Dales without seeing everything. There are plenty of walks – which we didn’t do – and various routes with varying conditions of roads, which meant we needed to choose a practical route. In fact, we went off that route almost immediately, but what we ended up doing was pretty much the absolute perfect introduction to the Yorkshire Dales national park.

We arrived from Haworth – more on that later, as I highly recommend staying there, or at least visiting.

From Haworth, it’s a short drive up through Keighley, and we were on our way to our first stop: Malham Cove.

Malham Cove

If I can say one thing about Malham Cove, it is that you should get there early.

By 11am on a beautiful winter’s day, we were stuck in a queue being diverted to the overflow car park with hundreds of cars. By the time we got to the end of the queue, the overflow car park was full and we were turned away.

We tried our luck in the main car park in the village in case we caught anyone leaving, but it was obviously rammed, and total chaos with families walking in front of cars without looking. I was worried this was going to be a bust. And this was in winter.

We decided to drive up the winding hill, which takes you essentially to the top of Malham Cove. Amazingly, there are plenty of grass verges up there where it’s possible to park. I recommend this hesitantly, as there are field gates that farmers need to use, and there also needs to be places to pass other cars, so please be sensible and considerate if you do this and don’t block any entrances. There was only one other car along that stretch when we got there, so we pulled in safely, and crossed over to assess our walking options.

In the distance, we could see (and even hear!) lots of people walking around the cove in the distance. Yet we were practically the only people in this part. It was amazing!

I will add that this was by far the busiest place we experienced all day, and I do wonder if it’s down to the “Harry Potter effect”. The cove is particularly famous now for being used in one of the camping scenes in the Deathly Hallows Part 1, when Harry & Hermione are tracking down horcruxes. This desolate scene in particular has such a unique landscape, and it’s here at Malham Cove.

From where we had parked, it was a short walk to some of the rocks. It doesn’t matter if this wasn’t the exact part they used in the films or the same part everyone else was walking to; it’s still really cool, and we had it all to ourselves!

There’s a fantastic walk you can do around Gordale Scar and Janet’s Foss waterfall, and we could see a few people heading round that way, but on limited time we just focused on the rocky plateau and the views ahead of us. It’s definitely somewhere I’d go back to as the walk looks fantastic – just hopefully not when it’s too busy!

Ribblehead Viaduct

We’d been planning to take the main road back to the south of the park and move along to a road that cuts straight up the middle towards Hawes. Our diversion up from Malham turned out to be a happy accident, because we carried on up this road instead until we reached Ribblehead Viaduct, which I didn’t think we’d get to see!

It was relatively busy here, but nothing like what we’d seen so far, and we pulled in for a few photos. There’s a good path right up to the viaduct but I thought it was actually better from further away, with how it cuts across the landscape.

In fact, I think the above photo is one of my favourite photos I’ve ever taken! Whereas the one a bit closer… isn’t.

From the viaduct, it’s a good piece of main road up to Hawes, home to one of my most anticipated stops of the day.

Wensleydale Creamery

Now I am a big fan of cheese. I am tagged in almost every cheese meme my friends see. And, dear readers, my favourite cheese of all time is Wensleydale with cranberries. So this was a must-stop for me!

Wensleydale has a large pop culture following too, having been a mainstay of British favourite Wallace & Gromit. It’s their favourite cheese! So of course, we were not surprised to turn up to the Wensleydale creamery to see Wallace & Gromit references EVERYWHERE.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find the big photo opportunity where you can sit with the characters themselves, and I’m not sure if they’ve taken it away (there was a big corner that looked like it had been recently changed…) or if it’s on the guided tours, which we didn’t have time for.

We did, of course, go into the cheese shop where there are samples of almost every type of cheese they offer! Oh my God, did I have a field day in there. They had one of the best blue cheeses I’ve tasted, and lots of varying flavours.

I bought four cheeses (it was 3 for £12 or something on the waxed cheese, and I got a cheddar as well) and they also have a brilliant gift shop. The only issue was I thought the cheese was really short-dated. I wanted to buy some of the blue cheese for my Dad (which I couldn’t find in the wax seal, which had longer dates), but it went out of date before I’d see him 3 weeks later! So we had to prioritise what we’d actually use.

This is the perfect place to stop for lunch as well, as it’s smack bang in the middle of the national park and the café looks really good. You could easily spend a couple of hours here, especially if you do a tour – which I’d like to do one day!

Hardraw Force waterfall

If you asked me to name where the tallest (single-drop) waterfall in England is, I wouldn’t have skipped a beat. Gotta be the Lake District, right? Nope.

It’s here in the Yorkshire Dales!

Just a short five minute drive from Hawes, pull up behind the Green Dragon Inn (real Lord Of The Rings vibes there…) and park by a café. You do have to pay £4 to visit the waterfall, because the path and area are privately maintained, and while I grumble at the idea of paying to access nature, I do think it’s worth it and they’ve done a brilliant job, with bridges crossing the little river and places to sit.

The waterfall itself is beautiful! Probably one of the best in the UK, especially for how accessible it is. Not so easy to photograph on a sunny winter afternoon, though.

Buttertubs Pass

Hawes is sat on an intersection of the park, and it told us that the quickest way home was to go east to the end of the park and then north up the M1 from there. Not to miss one of the highlights of the park, we headed north instead.

Ash genuinely thought I had only recommended going this way because of the name. Buttertubs does sound like the sort of thing I’d aim for. However we soon discovered that it is totally worth it.

These were easily the best views we had all day!

The first photo in this post is my favourite view of Buttertubs Pass, so I’ve kind of ruined this section by using it there, haven’t I?

Fine, here’s another bench view.

Not only that, but after driving down into Swaledale, the route took us to a place I’d stumbled across on Google Maps. In fact, I thought there was no way we’d pass it. Welcome to Crackpot!

The brakes went on and we pulled into a layby, and while I was taking a photo of the sign, I glanced up the hill at some movement. Some alpacas had spotted me. They started wandering down the hill, and instead of walking back to the car, I walked over to their gate instead, when they came running.

They probably just wanted food, but I was happy to say hello to them! So cute.

Behind them were two raggedy sheep looking worse for wear, but they were very cute as well.

And there endeth our brief but full road trip through the Yorkshire Dales, on a happy note with farm animals.

I don’t think we could have ended up doing a better route if we had tried. Obviously it would be better to spend at least a couple of days in the Yorkshire Dales, but given that we were on limited time, it was a fantastic way of seeing some of the national park.

Where to stay – Haworth

There are lots of places within the park itself, but I highly recommend a night in nearby Haworth.

Haworth is gorgeous, and known as the gateway to the Yorkshire Dales, which is apt. It’s also particularly famous for being the home of the Bronte sisters, so there are lots of things to see and do, including even the setting for Wuthering Heights.

Even the old post office has a plaque, as the sisters used it regularly to post manuscripts, and it’s just around the corner from their house, which is now a museum. If we’d had more time, we might have gone in, but I was happy enough just to wander the beautiful streets. The post office itself is about to re-open as a café.

There’s also a steam train which runs through from Keighley to Oxenhope, calling at Haworth for some excellent photo opportunities. Unfortunately I can’t vouch for this, because it was a freezing cold morning, and the tracks had to be de-iced. It meant that the steam train was delayed by at least half an hour, and we needed to get moving if we wanted to see the Dales.

We even stopped at Ingrow West station where there’s a lovely little free museum in a carriage in the train station, and bigger museums on site too. Unfortunately the train still never arrived, so we had to move on. We did, however, see a vintage bus ready to pick up the passengers from the train, which was really cool! In fact, it’s the only reason we pulled into the station, so I’m glad we did or we wouldn’t have discovered it!

It would be easy to spend a few days in this part of Yorkshire, with lots of lovely market towns nearby, as well as the larger town of Halifax. Not to mention all the nature, of course, which was our main reason for being here at all.

I’ve never really had a favourite area of England, but Yorkshire is certainly trying to become it.

Have you been to any of the national parks in England? Where’s your favourite?

Read more about England:
⭐ Meres, Tarns & Waters: A Short Stint In The Lake District
⭐ What To Do In Liverpool On A Monday
⭐ Visiting Northumberland, An Underrated County Of Castles
⭐ A Festive Weekend In York
⭐ Off-Beat London: A Quirky Weekend In The Capital