Where to stay in Yorkshire?

[AngryAngie]

Planning a short (less than a week) holiday to Yorkshire. Would take the train from London but drive once we arrived. Hope to visit the Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Forbidden Corner.

Where to stay, and what else to visit while we're there? DH and I have one DD, aged nine.

Yorkshire Wildlife Park is good, they have just got some new Polar Bears.

Yorkshire is huge! Where will you get the train to? How much driving do you want to do each day?

And yes to Yorkshire wildlife park, we spent all day there recently! But it's a lot further south than the Forbidden Corner.

Why would you train from London and then drive, will cost you a fortune. It’s not that far to drive.
Where are you going to be based?
What do you like?
Eg Hepworth gallery, Wakefield, or Staithes ( coastal village)

Plenty to do in York, with some great museums. And surprisingly, a trip to Hull for their museums and galleries is worthwhile too, easy to get to on the train too. Forbidden Corner....meh. if you want a day in the Dales it's ok but I think it's over rated

Think it depends what sort of stuff you'd like to do? Activities, sightseeing, coast, countryside, cities, attractions? There's plenty to go at up here!

Sculpture park and forbidden corner are miles apart.

If it was me I'd drive and stay York/pately bridge way and do sculpture park on way up.

Brimham rocks. Museums in York. Possibly a day trip to the coast. A walk in the dales and a mooch round some of the little towns. Light water valley.

I don’t know where we’d get the train to, that’s part of what I’m asking. I suppose I’m looking for a town or city near-ish those attractions. Which aren’t near the coast or York, right? (we’ve been there and really liked it).

I thought I’d just hire a car for two or three days of the holiday - we don’t have one - and DH finds driving stressful now he rarely does it, especially in and out of London where we live. It’s worth extra money to make it a nicer holiday for him.

DD needs entertaining, just countryside on its own won’t do that for her. I think she’d like the Forbidden Corner and we’d all enjoy the Sculpture Park. Museums are good.

You will struggle without a car everyday pretty much in Yorkshire particularly if you want to visit a range of places (rather than say base yourself in a seaside resort) as everything is far apart.

@badgerswitharms

Sculpture park and forbidden corner are miles apart.

If it was me I'd drive and stay York/pately bridge way and do sculpture park on way up.

Brimham rocks. Museums in York. Possibly a day trip to the coast. A walk in the dales and a mooch round some of the little towns. Light water valley.

All really good ideas. York is less scary to drive around than Leeds.

Yorkshire Wildlife Park is absolutely brilliant, and is easy enough to get to by car from York. You just drive down the A1.

I live in South Yorkshire, and we used to visit Chester Zoo, but having YWP on our doorstep we don't bother any more.

OK I'll look into driving up.

Would Harrogate be a good place to stay? Wakefield?

Knaresborough is definitely worth a visit, especially if the little outdoor pool is open on a hot day.

Himalayan Huts. Druids Temple. Newby Hall. The east coast. Saltaire/ Salts Mill. Leeds for shopping. York for beautiful. Malham Cove. Magna science centre. Light water Csllet. Defo YSP and Wildlife Park. Bolton Abbey for river swimming. One of the castles.

It’s made me realise how big Yorkshire is, it would be a good 2-3 hours drive between some of these places. Loads to do!

Meadowhall for shops
Wildlife park
Sculpture park
These are near Sheffield so maybe stay near there

Alton towers maybe?
York or Leeds on the train are easy from most places
Cleerthorpes if you want to see a beach
Gullivers

It’s an hour and a half between Yorks Sculpture Park and the Forbidden Corner. Yorkshire is HUGE!!

Between YWP and YSP about 40 mins? But you couldn’t do them both in a day….

Hmmm maybe stay around Leeds?

"Alton towers maybe?
York or Leeds on the train are easy from most places
Cleerthorpes if you want to see a beach"

Alton Towers and Cleethorpes? That would be around a 5 hour round trip!

Alton Towers and Cleethorpes? That would be around a 5 hour round trip!

And neither are in Yorkshire

@SecretKeeper1

Alton Towers and Cleethorpes? That would be around a 5 hour round trip!

And neither are in Yorkshire

😆😆😆

@AngryAngie

OK I'll look into driving up.

Would Harrogate be a good place to stay? Wakefield?

Harrogate is a lot better than Wakefield

If you are coming up on the train - get to York.
Use the car to see the coast and North Yorks Moors like Aysgarth Falls. Go on the steam train at Pickering. In less than week you'll not get out of North Yorks

Harrogate is definitely nicer, and it has a Betty’s which is a Yorkshire must do It’s also on a train line for Knaresborough and Leeds, both best visited by train. I think if you stay in Harrogate centre, you could do a couple of day trips by rail, and hire a car for 3 days to go further afield. A day at the coast, a day in the Dales etc.

Haha go to Wakefield, think you'll be the first to holiday there!

Leeds is busy and central but driving round it is awful, the inner ring road is quite literally one of the rings of hell.

Harrogate is lovely but not a huge amount to actually do there. York has a lot more going on and you can catch a bus to the seaside (tho it's a long way).

Forbidden corner is amazing but realistically you would have to drive and I'd say the same for YSP.

Forbidden Corner is great fun but you would definitely need to drive!

From York you can get trains to most places, including Scarborough if you wanted a day on the coast, Harrogate for pottering around there, up to Leeds for shops snd more city type stuff... And if you wanted to do places like the sculpture park or the wildlife park, you could hire a car or maybe even get a train and taxi?

You'll struggle to see much of Yorkshire and spend a lot of time driving around if you try to do much of the things mentioned during a few days.

You could spend a week each in West, North, South and East Yorkshire and barely scratch the surface on what to see and do. I've lived here and have spent over 40 years having very frequent days out and holidays and haven't seen everything I want to.

You could probably try staying a couple of days somewhere south of Leeds and then a couple of days somewhere further north you might be well placed to see the Wildlife and Sculpture Parks first, possibly also National Media Museum in Bradford or Royal Armouries in Leeds. Lots of big parks and animal attractions like Cannon Hall Farm, Temple Newsham Farm, Tropical World Roundhay Park in this area too.

Then you could go up to the Forbidden Corner and Yorkshire Dales, perhaps combining with Harrogate and Knaresborough and/or Ilkley.

Bolton Abbey would be nice on way up that way too.

Then there's also Flamingo Land and over to the east coast, but you really need a separate holiday for all that.

There was probably some amusement about the thought of staying in Wakefield on holiday (the city centre is sadly quite run down), but with the Barbara Hepworth Gallery, Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Sandal Castle, Newmillerdam, Thornes Park, Cannon Hall Farm, another farm/country house attraction I can't remember, Pugnes, Nostell Priory, Wentworth Castle, National Coal Mining Museum all very close to the city, plus canal walks and several smaller country parks and an indoor waterpark not far away in Barnsley then lots more to do in Leeds and further afield, I could think of a lot worse places to go on holiday and it certainly would be one way to have a holiday in a new place and also one that will be far away from the crowds of more popular places like Devon and Cornwall this summer.