The moors in a day, without rushing it
You can cross the whole thing in an hour, which is exactly the mistake.
By Ruth Ardsley · 6 min read
The North York Moors are small enough to drive across in an hour and that is precisely how most people ruin them. It is a landscape that only works if you keep stopping, and there is nothing to stop for in the sense of attractions. You stop because the road tops a rise and there is forty miles of nothing. The whole plateau is a North York Moors, which is worth knowing mainly because it means the roads are not going to be improved.
The route
Go in from the coast rather than from the west. The climb up off the sea is the best part of the drive and doing it in that direction means you finish inland with the light behind you.
When to go
Late August for the heather, which turns the whole plateau purple for about three weeks and is genuinely worth planning around. The rest of the year it is brown, which is also fine, and considerably emptier.
Practical
There is no petrol up there. There is very little phone signal. Neither is a problem unless you assumed otherwise.