Overview - Geology - Exploring - Places To Visit - Resources - Dales Cottages

The Yorkshire Dales

Welcome to TheYorkshireDales.org and our Yorkshire Dales information plus an overview of the area's geology, local villages, places to visit, online links and holiday cottages to rent for a relaxing stay in this wonderful part of the north of England.

The Yorkshire Dales is a region of stunning natural beauty, and has been inhabited since the early Stone Age. The rock of the area includes millstone grit and limestone, noticeable in the structure of many traditional local buildings. The limestone parts of the region have numerous underground caverns, many of which are popular with pot-holing and caving clubs. With a great number of scenic villages, hills and dales to walk and natural beauty to explore, the Dales are popular with day-visitors, weekenders and summer holidaymakers. A thriving travel and tourism industry has grown up to cater to these visitors and there are plenty of guesthouses, cottages to rent, hotels, campsites and hostels in the region.

The region known as the Yorkshire Dales covers an area straddling Yorkshire and Cumbria and flirts with the fringes of east Lancashire. It extends as far north as the River Tees and Teesdale, and includes Barnard Castle and Richmond, Nidderdale, Harrogate, Knaresborough, Skipton, Ilkley. Sedbergh, Kirkby Stephen, Langdale and Appleby. The Yorkshire Dales National Park is contained within this greater area of 'The Dales'. Whatever you, as a visitor, might want to find on your trip you'll be almost certain to find it somewhere here. Whether you're looking for solitude, peace and quiet, friendly villages, industrial archaeology, museums, walking, climbing cycling etc., etc., you'll find it in the Dales. They offer unparalleled beauty, and great places to visit for the day, either by car, cycle or on foot. Each area of the Dales presents a different face to the visitor, high and rugged or low-lying and placid, whatever and wherever, you won't be disappointed.