Walk the nave and choir of Rievaulx Abbey

Walk the grass terrace above the abbey between its two temples

See the split east tower of Helmsley Castle, slighted after the Civil War siege

Walk the Cleveland Way's first mile out of Helmsley

Twelve monks from Clairvaux founded Rievaulx in 1132, the first Cistercian house in the north of England, and it grew into one of the great monasteries until Henry VIII seized it in 1538. Its roofless arches fill the narrow valley of the Rye, with an 18th-century terrace and temples on the bank above, and Helmsley two miles away has a castle with a split keep and a walled garden.

Helmsley and Rievaulx: The First Cistercians in the North

Helmsley

A loop from York: the Minster and the walls, steam across the North York Moors, Whitby's abbey on the cliff, Rievaulx and Fountains, then Malham Cove, the Strid and the falls of Wensleydale in the Dales.

Yorkshire: The Moors, the Coast and the Dales

Walk the escarpment edge from Sutton Bank to Roulston Scar

Look down on Gormire Lake from the cliff path

Climb the path beside the White Horse of Kilburn and walk along the top of it

Drive the one-in-four climb of Sutton Bank

Sutton Bank is the western escarpment of the North York Moors, with a one-in-four climb and a view that James Herriot called the finest in England. A mile south along the edge, the White Horse of Kilburn was cut in 1857 on the initiative of Thomas Taylor, 318ft long and 220ft high, said to be the most northerly of England's white hill figures — and unlike the southern ones it is not on chalk, so it has to be dressed with limestone chippings.

Sutton Bank and the Kilburn White Horse

Board the North Yorkshire Moors Railway at Pickering for the 18 miles to Grosmont

Climb the motte of Pickering Castle, built in 1069–70 and rebuilt in stone between 1180 and 1236

Find the medieval wall paintings in Pickering parish church

Pickering is a market town on the southern edge of the North York Moors, and the North Yorkshire Moors Railway starts here, running 18 miles of preserved line across the moor to Grosmont, largely on the Whitby and Pickering Railway that George Stephenson planned, opened in 1836. The Normans built the castle in 1069–70 as a timber motte and bailey; it was rebuilt in stone between 1180 and 1236, the shell keep and chapel coming last, and in 1267 Henry III gave the manor, castle and forest to his youngest son, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster. The parish church is known for its medieval wall paintings, and Beck Isle Museum is in the town.

Pickering: The Castle and the Moors Railway's Southern End

Climb Roseberry Topping and look at the cliff left by the collapse of 1912

Pick out Captain Cook's Monument on Easby Moor from the summit

Go through the Captain Cook Schoolroom Museum in Great Ayton

Walk up to Captain Cook's Monument on Easby Moor

Roseberry Topping, 320m, has a half-cone summit with a jagged cliff that has been compared with the Matterhorn. Until 1912 it was a sugarloaf; then a geological fault, and possibly the alum and ironstone mining beneath it, made the summit collapse. James Cook grew up below it in Great Ayton and went to the school there, now the Captain Cook Schoolroom Museum, and on Easby Moor a 60ft monument put up in 1827 by Robert Campion, a Whitby banker, remembers him. From Roseberry you can see it.

Roseberry Topping and Great Ayton: Captain Cook's Country

Stargaze from the Dark Sky Discovery Site in Dalby Forest

Stand on the rim of the Hole of Horcum after dark

Walk a forest trail from the Dalby visitor centre by day

The North York Moors became an International Dark Sky Reserve in December 2020, and Dalby Forest lies at the centre of it, with the least light from the towns. It was made a Dark Sky Discovery Site of the Milky Way class in 2013, and the observatories in the forest run stargazing nights. North of the forest, the Hole of Horcum is a great bowl in the moor above Levisham.

Dalby Forest: The Dark Heart of the North York Moors

Arrive at Goathland station by steam train

Walk the Rail Trail to Grosmont on the old 1836 line

Find the Heartbeat locations around the village green

Goathland station on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway was used as Hogsmeade in the Harry Potter films, and the village was Aidensfield in Heartbeat. Tenants have grazed black-faced sheep on the greens and the moor here for hundreds of years, and Mallyan Spout falls in the wood below the village.

Goathland: Hogsmeade Station and the Moor

Walk York's medieval city walls, a circuit of about 3.4km through the four main gates, the longest town walls in England

Climb York Minster's central tower and see the Great East Window, glazed in 1405–1408 by John Thornton of Coventry, the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in Britain

Ride through the Jorvik Viking Centre, built on the Coppergate excavation and opened in 1984

See Mallard, the steam locomotive that set the record of 126mph in 1938, at the National Railway Museum

York's medieval walls run about 3.4km round the city through its four main gates, the longest town walls in England. York Minster's Great East Window, glazed in 1405–08 by John Thornton of Coventry, is the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in Britain, and the central tower can be climbed. The Jorvik Viking Centre, opened in 1984, is built on the Coppergate excavation, and the National Railway Museum has Mallard, which set the steam record of 126mph in 1938.

York: The Walls, the Minster and Jorvik

Walk the headland and the curtain wall of Scarborough Castle

Find Anne Brontë's grave at St Mary's church

Look down on both bays from the castle barbican

Henry II built the stone castle on the headland between Scarborough's two bays, and the town grew round it with charters of 1155 and 1163 that allowed a market on the sands. The castle changed hands seven times in the Civil War and endured two long sieges. Below it the spa water made Scarborough a resort long before the railways, and Anne Brontë, who came for her health, is buried at St Mary's under the castle.