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

See the Tees Transporter Bridge from the riverside, opened in 1911 and the longest surviving transporter bridge in the world

See the exhibitions at mima, the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, opened in 2007

Visit the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum in Stewart Park, Marton

The Tees Transporter Bridge, opened in 1911 and about 260m long, is the longest surviving transporter bridge in the world; its gondola has not crossed since the bridge closed for safety reasons in 2019. In the town, the Dorman Museum stands in Albert Park and mima, the Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art, opened in 2007; at Marton, the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum stands in Stewart Park.

Middlesbrough: The Transporter Bridge and Captain Cook's Birthplace

Hike the Cleveland Way along the cliffs from Saltburn towards Staithes

Ride Saltburn's water-balanced cliff lift of 1884 down from the cliff top to the pier of 1869 (March to October)

See Boulby's cliffs, the highest on the east coast of England, and Staithes, where Captain Cook worked in a shop in 1745

The Cleveland Way runs along the cliffs from Saltburn towards Whitby. Saltburn still has its water-balanced cliff lift of 1884, running from March to October, and the path passes Boulby, the highest cliff on the east coast of England, and drops into Staithes, where James Cook worked in a shop before going to sea at Whitby.

The Cleveland Way: Saltburn, Boulby and Staithes

Visit Royal Navy Museums: Hartlepool and board HMS Trincomalee, launched in Bombay in 1817 and the oldest warship still afloat in Britain

See the Heugh Battery on the Headland, whose guns returned fire on the German warships that bombarded Hartlepool on 16 December 1914

Walk the Headland, the old town of Hartlepool

HMS Trincomalee, launched in Bombay in 1817, is the oldest warship still afloat in Britain, and is the centrepiece of Royal Navy Museums: Hartlepool, on the quayside at Jackson Dock. On 16 December 1914 German warships bombarded the town, and the guns of the Heugh Battery on the Headland fired back; the battery is now a museum in the old town.

Hartlepool: HMS Trincomalee and the Heugh Battery

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

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 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

Ride the Heights of Abraham cable car across the Derwent gorge

Go down into the Great Masson or Great Rutland Cavern, old lead and fluorspar mines

Climb the Victoria Prospect Tower of 1844

Walk the riverside in Matlock Bath, the spa village Byron compared with Switzerland

Matlock Bath grew up as a spa in the Derwent gorge in the 19th century; Byron compared it with alpine Switzerland, which is how it got the nickname Little Switzerland. Above the village the Heights of Abraham is a hilltop park on Masson Hill, reached since 1984 by cable car across the river, with two old lead and fluorspar mines to go down into, the Great Masson and Great Rutland Caverns, and the Victoria Prospect Tower, built in 1844. Every autumn the Venetian Nights light up the river with illuminated boats.

Matlock Bath: The Heights of Abraham

Walk out to Spurn Head from Kilnsea at low tide

Find the two old lighthouses on the point

Spurn runs more than three miles out from the East Riding coast across the mouth of the Humber, in places only 50 yards wide. It was a spit with a road down it until a storm in 2013 made the road impassable at high tide, so it is now a tidal island. The Yorkshire Wildlife Trust has owned it since 1960 as a national nature reserve, and the Humber funnels migrating birds down its shores. At the tip, Spurn Head, the lifeboat station was built in 1810 and was home to an RNLI crew until early 2023, and two old lighthouses stand on the point.