Beat the Heat

North Yorkshire offers everything from beautifully preserved medieval strongholds to dramatic romantic ruins.  These enormous armoured structures have thick stone walls that offer cool indoor spaces while the walls and towers that provide ample shade.  Skipton Castle, with over 900 years of history, remains impressively intact and open for exploration.

Explore Castles

Perhaps a gentle stroll around a stately home is more your style? Explore how Lords and Ladies lived in these impressive buildings, set in beautifully maintained gardens where trees and wooded areas provide welcome pockets of shade. Discover 18th century Harewood House near Harrogate, which appeared as a royal residence in the ‘Downton Abbey’ feature film. With family-friendly activities, creative workshops and interactive exhibitions  there is something for all ages.

Historic Houses

One of the best ways to stay cool and out of the heat is to head underground! For a real adventure take a tour of one of the cave systems that lie beneath the ground such as Stump Cross Caverns in the Yorkshire Dales.  Deep into the limestone rock you can follow paths opened up by millennia of water activity. Each cave across North Yorkshire is filled with history and provides a window to prehistoric times, and the formation of our landscape.

Explore a cave

If you’re not quite ready to head indoors, then pack up a flask and head for a bit of shade amongst the trees. At the foot of the North York Moors National Park, near Thornton-le-Dale, you’ll find Dalby forest - a perfect place to take a breath amongst the trees, picnic by Dalby beck or swing the high ropes through the towering pines. A few miles west of Selby take a stroll through nature preserve Brayton Barff or a couple of miles off the coast near Scarborough discover Raincliffe & Forge Valley Woods an ancient woodland and National Nature Reserve. Explore more green escapes on our woodland pages.

To the woods