Northern England Tours

This beautiful 80 km / 50-mile circular walk in the Yorkshire Dales threads its way around the valleys of Wensleydale and Swaledale and over the mountains and moorlands between these two emerald dales. A walk designed to take in some of the countryside beloved by James Alfred Wight, the vet who wrote about his experiences in the Yorkshire Dales as James Herriot. These books became popular in the 1970s and 80s and spawned a film and a very popular television series ‘All Creatures Great and Small’.

This is a journey of discovery through the magical landscape of the English Lake District. We start in Windermere and end with a boat ride into Keswick. In between you will have visited the delightful places of Hawkshead, Coniston and the valleys of Dunnerdale, Eskdale, Wasdale and Borrowdale. From Keswick, the preferred choice is to hop on one of the regular buses, probably a double-decker, for the return to Windermere through the central Lake District.

The iconic Yorkshire Dales National Park has extraordinary natural beauty derived from the Iceland rain sculptured limestone. It has over thousands of years been fashioned into a range of shallow and deep ‘Dales’, gorges, rocky pavements, waterfalls and gushing rivers, caves and woodland glades. Human interaction with the landscape has moulded the geology to create farms and fields lined with miles of dry‑stone walls, the ribbed ruins of abbeys, medieval castles, pastures glowing with multi‑shades of green, sitting below wilder lands of heather and sedge, home of red grouse and deer. The Yorkshire Dales Cycleway follows a circuit of normally quiet lanes that are ideal for cycling.

Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk is by far the most popular long-distance trail in Britain, and one of the world’s great walks.

Wainwright’s Coast to Coast Walk is by far the most popular long-distance trail in Britain, and one of the world’s great walks.