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

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

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 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

Tour Skipton Castle and its Conduit Court

Walk to Bolton Priory and cross the stepping stones

Ride the Embsay and Bolton Abbey Steam Railway

Skipton Castle, above the canal basin at the gateway to the Dales, is one of the best-preserved medieval castles in England. Six miles east in Wharfedale, the Augustinian priory at Bolton Abbey stands beside the river with its nave still in use as the parish church, and upstream the whole Wharfe is forced through a rock channel a few feet wide known as the Strid.

Skipton and Bolton Abbey: A Castle, a Priory and the Strid

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

Walk among the gritstone crags of Brimham Rocks, the National Trust moorland site above Nidderdale

Walk around Gouthwaite Reservoir in Nidderdale, watching for waterbirds

Walk the gorge path at How Stean, the limestone ravine above Lofthouse

Nidderdale is a National Landscape, formerly an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, of moor, reservoir and gritstone. Brimham Rocks stand on the moor above the dale as a field of weathered gritstone tors, and Gouthwaite Reservoir below holds wintering waterbirds. Up the dale, How Stean Gorge is a limestone gorge between the villages of Stean and Lofthouse.

Nidderdale: Brimham Rocks and How Stean Gorge

Find your way through the tunnels and grottoes without a map

Tick off the checklist of oddities you are given at the entrance

In Coverdale, the Forbidden Corner is a folly garden built in the 1980s as a private pleasure garden and opened to the public in 1997: a maze of tunnels, grottoes, false doors and sculptures that the Folly Fellowship voted the best European folly of the 20th century. It is laid out as a maze, and visitors are given a checklist of oddities to hunt down.

The Forbidden Corner: The Strangest Garden in the Dales

Climb the keep of Richmond Castle above the Swale

Hear the story of the Richmond Sixteen and explore their cell-block graffiti through the castle's interactive displays

Take a tour of the Georgian Theatre Royal of 1788

Walk the falls of the Swale below the castle

Richmond Castle was begun in 1071 and its great keep added in the late 12th century, and its cell block still carries the graffiti of the Richmond Sixteen, conscientious objectors held there in 1916. The Georgian Theatre Royal in the town was built in 1788 by the actor-manager Samuel Butler and is among the oldest theatres still working in Britain, with the oldest known set of stage scenery in existence.