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Northern England has a different character (and a different accent)from softer, greener southern England. The North is where you find the
walled city of York , with its Viking heritage, medieval
buildings, and glorious cathedral — the largest Gothic cathedral in
Europe. Crammed with museums, restaurants, and plenty to do day and
night, York is an excellent headquarters for exploring England’s northern
climes. With a car, you can make the easy drive to North York Moors
National Park and Yorkshire Dales National Park, two areas of haunting
beauty where the heather-covered moors and winding river valleys draw
walkers and nature lovers. Emily Brontë’s novel Wuthering Heights or
Charlotte Brontë’s equally beloved Jane Eyre may have formed your
images of bleak, windswept Yorkshire moors. The Brontë homestead in
the village of Haworth is a place of literary pilgrimage year-round. East
of York, in a vast, landscaped park, sits the greatest country house in
Yorkshire: Castle Howard. The television series Brideshead Revisited
used this castle for filming, and visitors can explore its ornate rooms
and gardens year-round. Scarborough, on the Yorkshire coast, is a funloving seaside resort with a wide, curving beach and plenty of gaudy
seaside arcades. You can easily get from Scarborough to Whitby, a
small, attractive fishing village.
Cumbria, the northern county west of Yorkshire, offers some of the
most beautiful and dramatic countryside in England. Here, you find high,
bare hills (or small, bare mountains, if you prefer), numerous lakes, and
villages nestled in the unspoiled countryside that characterizes the Lake
District , a national park area. Bowness, one of the
region’s resort centers, sits on 16km-long (10-mile) Lake Windemere,
the largest lake in England. Literature lovers associate the Lake District
with the poet William Wordsworth, whose homes in Grasmere and
Rydal you can visit, and with Beatrix Potter, the author and illustrator of
children’s classics such as The Tale of Peter Rabbit. Potter’s home in
Near Sawrey, on the north side of Lake Windemere, is open to the
public. Hawkshead, a short distance away, is a charming village constructed of the distinctive gray Lakeland stone. Keswick, a few miles
north, is a large, important county town on the shores of Derwentwater.
Like the rest of the Lake District, Derwentwater buzzes with visitors
from Easter to October.
Source:England Dummies by Donald Olson