Judy's Postcards: York - Moors and Dales

We did a day trip from York to take in the Moors and Dales and visit the town of Haworth.

Our first stop is at the Bingley Five Rise Locks where we saw the highest Staircase Lock in the UK, a spectacular feat of engineering constructed in 1774 as part of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal. We were fortunate in that there were quite a few narrow boats in the canal using the locks and we watched them navigate through the locks.

We then arrived in Haworth which is on the edge of the rugged Pennine Moors, where the Bronte family lived from 1820 and the sisters wrote their famous novels. We visited the Bronte Parsonage Museum and the Bronte Memorial Chapel in the nearby Church where their father preached, and afterwards explored the quaint shops on the cobbled main street which is extremely steep.

We left Haworth and headed up Penistone Hill for a photo stop to admire the moorland views towards Top Withens, where the Bronte Sisters walked to gain inspiration, before heading north into Wharfedale in the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

We stopped briefly in the picturesque, traditional Dales village of Linton. We had time to wander around and look at the almshouses and the river.

The next stop was Bolton Abbey, where we were able to explore the Priory Church and ruins of the 12th Century Augustinian Priory in its beautiful riverside setting, There was also an opportunity to take the stepping stones challenge if you are feeling more adventurous. It looked a bit perilous to me. It was also very crowded with people.

We left Bolton Abbey to visit the nearby Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway (as seen on “Great Railway Journeys” with Michael Portillo), where we took a steam train ride through the picturesque Yorkshire Dales scenery between Bolton Abbey and Embsay Stations.

We drove back to York via Harrogate and Wetherby.