Visit the Royal Armouries Museum, the national collection of arms and armour, opened in Leeds in 1996

Explore Leeds Art Gallery, beside the Henry Moore Institute

Shop at Kirkgate Market, under its 1904 hall, where Marks & Spencer began as a penny bazaar in 1884

The Royal Armouries, the national collection of arms and armour, moved to Leeds in 1996. Kirkgate Market has traded on its present site since the 1850s, and Marks & Spencer began there as a penny bazaar in 1884. Leeds Art Gallery stands beside the Henry Moore Institute, and the Thackray Museum of Medicine tells the history of medicine.

Leeds: The Royal Armouries and Kirkgate Market

Walk the grid of workers' streets named after the Salt family

See Saltaire United Reformed Church, Salt's Italianate chapel, open for Sunday services and advertised open days

Walk the Leeds and Liverpool Canal towpath past the mill

Sir Titus Salt built Saltaire between 1851 and 1871 — mill, houses, school, hospital, institute and church — to take his workers out of the slums of Bradford, laying it out between the railway and the Leeds and Liverpool Canal on the Aire. It is a World Heritage Site, and Salts Mill now holds a large collection of work by David Hockney, who was born in Bradford.

Saltaire: Titus Salt's Model Village

Walk the 500 acres of Yorkshire Sculpture Park, opened in 1977 in the Bretton Hall estate, among works by Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, Andy Goldsworthy and James Turrell

Visit The Hepworth Wakefield, David Chipperfield's gallery opened in 2011

Find the Henry Moore bronzes in the open landscape at YSP

Walk the lakeside paths and visit the Underground Gallery at YSP

The Yorkshire Sculpture Park opened in the Bretton Hall estate in 1977 and spreads Moore, Hepworth, Goldsworthy and changing shows over 500 acres of park, lakes and pasture; it is the only place in Europe to see Barbara Hepworth's The Family of Man in its entirety. Seven miles away in Wakefield, David Chipperfield's Hepworth gallery opened in 2011 on the Calder, holding Barbara Hepworth's plasters and prototypes.

The Yorkshire Sculpture Park and the Hepworth

Take a session in the Victorian Turkish Baths

Smell the sulphur water at the Royal Pump Room, over Europe's strongest sulphur well

Walk the Valley Gardens between the wells

Harrogate became known as the English Spa in the Georgian era, built on chalybeate and sulphur springs found from the 16th century; its water carries iron, sulphur and salt. The Royal Pump Room stands over Europe's strongest sulphur well, the Victorian Turkish Baths on Parliament Street still work as baths, and the RHS garden at Harlow Carr is on the edge of the town.

Harrogate: The English Spa and the Turkish Baths

Climb to the Cow and Calf rocks above the town

Find the Swastika Stone and the cup-and-ring carvings on the moor

Walk out to the Twelve Apostles stone circle

See White Wells, the 18th-century plunge bath on the moor

Ilkley became a fashionable spa town in the 19th century, with the Ben Rhydding Hydro built a mile east between 1843 and 1844. The moor above it carries the Cow and Calf rocks, more than 250 cup-and-ring marks and a carved swastika, and the Twelve Apostles stone circle raised about 4,500 years ago — and the folk song about it warns against going up there baht 'at.

Ilkley: The Moor, the Cow and Calf and the Victorian Cure

Watch teddy bears slowly turning stony under the mineral water of the petrifying well

Walk the riverside under the viaduct and hire a rowing boat

Find the cave cut into the cliff at Mother Shipton's

Knaresborough stands above a gorge of the Nidd crossed by a railway viaduct, with a ruined castle on the cliff. On the far bank, the dropping well beside Mother Shipton's Cave coats objects hung under it in minerals until they look like stone, and has been charging visitors since 1630 — the oldest paying tourist attraction in England. Mother Shipton, the legendary prophetess said to have been born Ursula Southeil in the cave around 1488, gives the place its name.

Knaresborough: The Petrifying Well and the Viaduct

Visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum in Haworth, the home of the Brontë family from 1820

Hike to Top Withens, the ruined moorland farmhouse long associated with Wuthering Heights

See from Market Street the Brontë Birthplace in Thornton, where the four Brontë children who became writers were born

Ride the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway to Haworth

The Brontës moved to the parsonage at Haworth in 1820, and it is now the Brontë Parsonage Museum. Across the moor above the village, the ruined farmhouse of Top Withens has long been linked with Wuthering Heights: the house itself was nothing like the one in the novel, but its moorland setting may have been in Emily's mind. All four of the Brontë children who became writers were born before the move, in Thornton, and the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway still runs steam up to Haworth.

Haworth: The Brontë Parsonage and Top Withens

Visit the ruins of Whitby Abbey on the headland, on the site of the monastery where the Synod of Whitby was held in 664 and where Bram Stoker set scenes of Dracula

Climb the 199 steps to St Mary's Church above the harbour

Tour the Captain Cook Memorial Museum on Grape Lane, in the house where Cook lodged as an apprentice

Whitby Abbey stands in ruins on the East Cliff, where the Synod of Whitby met in 664 and where Bram Stoker set scenes of Dracula; 199 steps climb to St Mary's Church beside it. Across the harbour, James Cook lodged as an apprentice in the house on Grape Lane that is now the Captain Cook Memorial Museum, and the whalebone arch stands on the West Cliff.

Whitby: The Abbey, the 199 Steps and Captain Cook

Walk up to Malham Cove, the 80m curved limestone cliff, and look up at its face from the beck

Walk into Gordale Scar and look up at the falls

Walk the limestone pavement on top of the Cove

Follow the beck to Janet's Foss on the way round

Malham Cove is a curved limestone cliff 80m high with a pavement of clints and grikes along its top, left when the ice went. A mile east, Gordale Scar cuts into the hills as a gorge with waterfalls in its throat, and Janet's Foss drops into a pool on Gordale Beck, on the path from Malham village to the Scar.