North Yorkshire Moors

A cheerful stone-built town, Helmsley is very much in the North York Moors tradition. The spacious cobbled market place bursts into life on Fridays when clothes and food stalls set up, and elsewhere there are plenty of antiques and craft shops for browsing. The Royal Oak is open all day and does substantial food.

Helmsley Castle dates from the 12th century, and after a comprehensive clobbering in the Civil War in 1644 stands as an eerie jagged ruin within formidable earthworks. Just outside town, Duncombe Park is an early 18th-century baroque mansion sitting in 300 acres of parkland landscaped with gardens and a superb folly-embellished grass terrace (with a Doric temple at one end and an Ionic rotunda at the other). The house itself was gutted by fire in the 19th century so has a turn-of-the-century flavour, with its huge oak-panelled saloon and splendidly grand entrance hall.

Head north-west on the B1257.

The beautifully evocative Cistercian ruin of Rievaulx Abbey (English Heritage) is set in the wooded hills of Rye Dale, and was in medieval times one of the most prosperous monasteries in England it owned 6000 acres of land, grazed by the first flocks of sheep on the North York Moors. The nave dates from 1135, and the 13th-century choir rises in three tiers. The visitors' centre and museum have hands-on displays about the site's history.

Just above the abbey on the hillside, Rievaulx Terrace (NT) was created by an 18th-century landowner who wanted to make the most of the views down to the abbey. It is remarkably like that at Duncombe Park (see above) a long grassy terrace, with an Ionic banqueting hall at one end and a rotunda known as the Tuscan temple at the other.

Carry on north on the B1257.

Just before the road makes a sharp descent, it is crossed by the Cleveland Way, the long-distance National Trail which makes a high-level walking route around three sides of the National Park. Here it follows the moorland edge of the Cleveland Hills, and a quick stroll up from the road up Hasty Bank gives tremendous views over industrial Teesside. There's a useful car park just north at Clay Bank.