North Yorkshire and the Moors

One of the first stories I can remember that captivated my imagination as a child and still to this day has left a lingering impression upon me was a story set in the mysterious moors of England. At the time I read that book I had no idea what a moor was. Even with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's many haunting depictions of the daytime and nighttime experiences of living in and around English moors, it remained a thing of mystique and curiosity for me until we stayed in the moors of Northern England on this trip.

I did not take this picture because I was driving 100% of the time we were on the moors, but this internet photo perfectly captures the exact views we had during our stay in North Yorkshire:

Thankfully, not only did the moors live up to my childhood dreams and expectations from when Sherlock Holmes kept me on the edge of my seat as I read "The Hound of the Baskervilles", but they left me wanting more (see how I did that?)! We stayed in the most perfectly quintessential English countryside village any Hollywood set jockey could find: Rosedale Abbey. The entire town couldn't have more than 75 permanent residents and about a dozen buildings, all of which are older than America! The buildings, that is. Of course, in proper English style, 4 of those 12 buildings were pubs and two of them were churches. We wandered into town and visited the most lively of the pubs that had outdoor seating since the weather was absolutely perfect and we enjoyed a wonderful meal and visit with the locals. It was one more amazing thing to top off the perfectness of this amazing village getaway. We cracked up at the loud jokes of the lone Scotsman there who was very welcoming to our party of 8 from Texas. We'll never forget the joke he told us when my Father-in-law told him he was celebrating 49 years of marriage with my Mother-in-law. The Scottish gentlemen pointed to his lady next to him and said "We were happy for 20 years....and then we met". Bahahaha!

This was only our first taste of North Yorkshire (a broad swath of Northern England). The farm house we stayed in and the village of Rosedale Abbey were located in a lush green valley between two lines of high, flat ridges. Unlike in most of the American terrain we've seen, the highest points of these hills were not covered in trees, but rather dense and vast pasturelands. No trees seemed to be able to survive on the tops of these hills, even though they were nowhere near the height of snow-capped peaks in America. Another very unique and awesome thing about these rangelands on the tops of all the hills surrounding us (called moors), was that they were free ranging public grazing lands for local ranchers to keep their sheep herds. Driving through these highland moors was not only treacherous due to the narrow one-lane roads where you had to make way for oncoming cars at times, but you also had to slow down and/or dodge the sheep and nesting ground birds that resembled American pheasant.

This home surprised us with how absolutely wonderful and peaceful it was. Also, it was a great launching off point for lots of northern England sites. If we had known, we would have stayed longer. But from here, we saw Rievaulx and Whitby Abbeys, which were both amazing! Our couple of days in this part of England will forever be burned into our memories as some of our most treasured moments of all our travels. We want to go back to this place. Don't forget to check out our photo album of this area!