30 May 2025
Highly recommend this Tour and "The Yorkshire Dales of All Creatures Great & Small" also by Grand Yorkshire.
A great feature of the Grand Yorkshire Tours is that they pick up from your agreed point. We'd caught a train in from Leeds so us 4 were picked up at York Station. Another group of 3 completed the full booking in Pete's minivan.
The countryside was scenic straight out of York as we headed to Helmsley for morning tea from "Annie's Bakery" and a short wander around the village. Pete gave us a fascinating insight into the place names in the North York Moors as we worked our way to a lookout where they had mined ironstone, then into the seaside village of Whitby. We opted to be dropped off at the top of the hill at the Abbey (really ruins), with a great view over the village. We than had plenty of time to walk down into Whitby central, enjoy fish and chips at the Abbey Wharf and stroll across to our pick up point at the station.
From there, we left the coast with a scenic drive to Goathland, where we waited for the train. Due to exceptionally dry weather, they were running diesel instead of the steam locomotives, but the carriages were historic and well restored.
Pete was waiting for us at Pickering, and from there we had a couple of photo stops on the trip back to York.
Although we missed out on the steam locomotive, that was outside of Grand Yorkshire's control, but we still had a wonderful day's experience.