Your Tour Options In Lakeland and The North
Via North York Moors
Route 1A on the map . . .
Direct
Route 1B on the map . . .
Route 2 on the map . . .
3: Durham To Keswick via Hadrian’s Wall
Route 3 on the map . . .
4: Durham to Edinburgh via Hadrian’s Wall
Durham to Edinburgh via Alnwick
Routes 2 and 4A on the map . . .
Direct on the A68
Routes 2 and 4B on the map . . .
Route 5 on the map . . .
B. Keswick to Chester via the Yorkshire Dales
Routes 5 and 6 on the map . . .
The touring notes for this region will take you from York in the south, across the North York Moors, through the Borders Country to Scotland, back to the landscape glories of the Lake District and finally south to Chester.
Northumbria was the birthplace of English Christianity and the northernmost limit of Roman occupation. Along the coast the road leads to the haunts of Grace Darling, St Cuthbert the bishop of Lindisfarne, Hadrian and the brutal forces that fought and died on the battlefields of Flodden.
On the broad sweep of the coastline here marauding Vikings and people of the Low Countries made their earliest landings, not always to the great joy of the locals.
Between York and Durham the suggested route is across the North York Moors National Park, where you will cross one of the largest expanses of heather moorland in the world.
In the park’s woodlands, oak, ash, birch and rowan thrive, while shrubs such as hazel and hawthorn provide the understorey. Alder often grows in the damper ground along rivers and streams. Large broadleaf woods are rare but significant woods are still found in the lower parts of some valleys such as the Esk, or at Roxby near Staithes and Mulgrave Woods near Sandsend.
It’s an area where you can get back to back to nature and enjoy the journey.
You will also get to explore
Rievaulx Abbey, one of the most complete, and atmospheric, of England’s abbey ruins.
Castle Howard is an18th century stately residence, set in 1,000 landscaped acres just outside York.
For more on the things to see and do on the road between York and Durham click here . . .
In AD122 Emperor Hadrian arrived in Britain and decreed that his legions should build a wall twixt them and the barbarians to the north.
Perhaps it was because the “barbarians” had a wee bit of an issue with a foreign occupying army. Either way, they constantly harried and fell upon the Roman encampments with serious intent. Despite that the occupiers fashioned an early version of the Berlin Wall with forts, mile castles and turrets hat stretched from one coast to the other.
Hadrian’s Wall was manned by 13,000 troops during a 250 year period, but by AD400 the last of the garrisons gave it away and left us an enduring monument to this period in British history.
For more on the things to see and do on the road to Hadrian’s Wall click here . . .
Further to the north, on the road from Durham to Edinburgh, lies the land of the first British Christians, at Lindisfarne is Holy Island, now part of the Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve.
Inland from the coast are some of the finest ecclesiastical (church) ruins in Britain. Ancient abbeys like Jedburgh, Melrose, Kelso and Dryburgh have a mystic air about them; ruined though they may be they still exude a power and a presence.
There are some great houses worthy of a look – Cragside, the home of industrialist and inventor Sir William Armstrong; Floors Castle, and Robert Adam’s masterpiece, Mellerstain.
And there is also a look at the scene of one of the bloodiest battles ever fought on British soil at Flodden Field.
For more on the things to see and do on the road to Edinburgh click here . . .
Attractions along the way
Further to the north, on the road from Durham to Edinburgh, lies the land of the first British Christians, at Lindisfarne is Holy Island, now part of the Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve.
Inland from the coast are some of the finest ecclesiastical (church) ruins in Britain. Places like Jedburgh, Melrose, Kelso and Dryburgh have a mystic air about them; ruined though they may be they still exude a power and a presence.
There are some great houses worthy of a look – Cragside, the home of industrialist and inventor Sir William Armstrong; Floors Castle, and Robert Adam’s masterpiece, Mellerstain.
And there is also a look at the scene of one of the bloodiest battles ever fought on British soil at Flodden Field.
For more on the things to see and do on the road to Edinburgh click here . . .
Edinburgh
Recognised as the capital of Scotland since at least the 15th century, Edinburgh is home to the Scottish Parliament and the seat of the monarchy in Scotland. The city has long been a centre of education, particularly in the fields of medicine, Scottish law, literature, the sciences and engineering.
It is also famous for the Edinburgh International Festival and the Fringe, the latter being the world’s largest annual international arts festival. The city’s historical and cultural attractions have made it the United Kingdom’s second most popular tourist destination after London, attracting over one million overseas visitors each year. Adapted from Wikipedia . . .
The Lake District
The Lake District has inspired poets and writers for centuries. And no wonder. It is just one of the most beautiful places in Britain, its 885 square miles protected as a national park since 1951.
In fact it gave its name to a group of 19th century writers, the Lake Poets, most prominently William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey. But others such as Beatrix Potter and John Ruskin have drawn inspiration from this wonderful visual cocktail of lakes, woodlands and fells (mountain sides).
For me, personally, I remember as a kid at school I had a box of “Lakeland” coloured pencils, made in Keswick, and the photograph on the box fascinated me: The blues, browns and purples of the towering glacier-gouged mountains cradling gentle lake-studded valleys instilled a desire to see it for myself. It took a while – 35 years – but eventually I got there and it was even more majestic, more inspiring than I expected. See the information on The Cumberland Pencil Co below.
The Lake District has an amazing range of scenic beauty. The mountains were created by volcanic eruption 450 million years ago. In the centre there’s the rugged crown of Scafell Pike, the highest in England. Not far away are Saddleback and Skiddaw, almost the same height, but rounded and smoothed by towering glaciers during the Ice Age less than a million years ago. Those same glaciers carved out the huge valleys that formed the beds of the lakes.
Nowhere else in England do you get this contrast of so much water with dramatic scenery. It’s what make the Lakes District such a popular tourist spot.
There are 16 major lakes, ranging in size from 1/2 mile Brothers Water to Windermere 10.5 miles long.
Trick Question: How many actual lakes are there in the Lake District? Bleeeeep! Wrong! There’s only one! Bassenthwaite Lake. All the others are, strictly speaking, tarns, meres or waters as in Thirlemere, Ullswater, Windermere etc.
It is also great walking country with walks for every ability from ambles around lakes to high ridge walks, with a bit of scrambling – climbing over rocks without a rope. An excellent source of walking information can be found at the Walklakes website or the Lakes District National Park website.
For more on the things to see and do on the road to The Lake District click here . . .
From Keswick to Chester there are two ways you can tackle this journey. Either way you’ll start by exploring further afield in the Lake District as you head south past Windermere.
Then you can take a choice – either rip straight down the M6 through the west Midlands, the industrial heartland of England, to Chester, or take a longer, but much more interesting, and more beautiful route through the Yorkshire Dales.
As you travel south you will have the Pennines, a range of hills, as your companion. If you take the M6 option they’ll be on your left. Take the Yorkshire Dales road and you’ll pick your way through the higgledy-piggledy pile of river valleys that make up the Yorkshire Dales National Park, part of the Pennine system. The Pennines aren’t exactly a continuous line of hills, instead they a chain of short ranges with the river-worn Dales between them.
Founded as a Roman fortress in the 1st century A.D. Chester is known for its extensive Roman walls made of local red sandstone. In the old city, the Rows is a shopping district distinguished by 2-level covered arcades and Tudor-style half-timber buildings. A Roman amphitheatre, with ongoing excavations, lies just outside the old city’s walls.