North York Moors National Park: where it is, what to see, and a one-day route from Sutton Bank to Whitby

The North York Moors National Park is a wide, high plateau of heather moor, cut by green valleys, running from the edge of the Vale of York to the cliffs of the North Sea. You can see it in a day: the A169 crosses it from Pickering to Whitby, and the best stops along its south-western edge are only a few miles apart. I rode exactly that kind of day on a small-group tour from York in October 2026, and our trip’s moors day is built on it. Below: where the park is, what’s worth stopping for, the steam railway, walks, the heather, the TV connections, and the route we take.

Where is the North York Moors?

North Yorkshire, in the north-east of England, with York the nearest city to the south. The park’s western edge is the steep escarpment of the Hambleton Hills, where Sutton Bank is. Its southern edge has the market towns of Helmsley and Pickering. Its eastern edge is the coast: Whitby, Robin Hood’s Bay and Scarborough.

Don’t mix it up with the Yorkshire Dales, the other big national park, which lies to the west. And don’t mix up either one with the moors around Haworth. That’s Brontë country, in West Yorkshire, and it isn’t a national park at all. (People do this constantly. If you came here looking for Wuthering Heights, you want Books by the Brontë sisters and the Wuthering Heights locations guide.)

North York Moors National Park: the key facts

Designated	28 November 1952
Area	554 square miles (1,436 sq km)
Coastline	26 miles
Heather moorland	About a third of the park, one of the largest expanses in England
Main gateways	Helmsley, Pickering, Whitby, Sutton Bank
Authority	North York Moors National Park Authority

Elizabeth Gaskell, who set her novel Sylvia’s Lovers in and around Whitby, described the land behind the town:

I have said that the country for miles all around was moorland; high above the level of the sea towered the purple crags, whose summits were crowned with greensward that stole down the sides of the scaur a little way in grassy veins.

— Elizabeth Gaskell, Sylvia’s Lovers, Chapter I (1863), Project Gutenberg

When is the heather out?

Late summer, when it flowers purple. The rest of the year the moor is brown and bronze. In October, when our trip goes, you trade the purple for autumn color in the valleys below. Honestly, it’s a fair trade.

Sutton Bank: “the finest view in England”

Sutton Bank is the escarpment on the A170 between Thirsk and Helmsley, at the park’s western edge. James Herriot, the vet and writer who practised in Thirsk, called the view from the top the finest in England. You look west across the Vale of York, and on a clear day you can pick out the towers of York Minster.

Two short walks from the top:

• The Kilburn White Horse, along the escarpment on foot. It’s cut into the hillside, 100 metres (352 ft) long, and was finished in 1857 by the local schoolmaster.
• Gormire Lake, below the escarpment. It’s the only natural lake in the national park, formed by glacial meltwater, and you can only get there on foot.

Dorothy Wordsworth came over these hills at dusk on 4 October 1802 with her brother William (who’d been married that very morning, at Brompton), and saw the view over the vale:

Far far off from us, in the western sky, we saw shapes of castles, ruins among groves, a great spreading wood, rocks, and single trees, a minster with its tower unusually distinct, minarets in another quarter, and a round Grecian Temple also

— Dorothy Wordsworth, journal, 4 October 1802, Journals of Dorothy Wordsworth, vol. 1, Project Gutenberg

Byland Abbey

Byland is a ruined Cistercian abbey a few miles south of Sutton Bank, run by English Heritage. Same order of monks as Fountains Abbey, near Ripon. Its west front still holds the broken arc of a great round window.

The monks had a long road here. Their community started in 1134 as a daughter house of Furness Abbey, at Calder in Cumbria. A Scottish army sacked Calder in 1138. They tried Old Byland, which turned out to be too close to Rievaulx Abbey, then spent about 30 years at Stocking, near Oldstead. They began draining the marshy ground at Byland in the late 1150s and moved in by 1177. The abbey closed on 30 November 1538, when the abbot and 25 monks signed it over to the Crown. Look for the remains of the tiled floor near the east end.

The grounds are free, and it’s usually much quieter than its famous neighbor, Rievaulx. That’s exactly why we stop here.

Helmsley

Helmsley is a small market town: a square, cafés and a castle. Helmsley Castle has been a medieval fortress, an Elizabethan mansion, a Civil War stronghold under siege (Parliament’s troops besieged it for about three months in 1644), and finally a romantic ruin. Its tall east tower still stands over the town. As of November 2026 it’s open Friday to Sunday, so check the castle’s page before you plan around it.

Dorothy Wordsworth was here on the same journey:

We reached Helmsly just at dusk. We had a beautiful view of the castle from the top of the hill, and slept at a very nice inn, and were well treated; floors as smooth as ice.

— Dorothy Wordsworth, journal, 15 July 1802, Project Gutenberg

(Floors as smooth as ice. Two centuries on, that’s still a decent inn review.)

Rievaulx Abbey and its terrace

Rievaulx is the other great Cistercian ruin on the moors’ southern edge, in a wooded valley close to Helmsley, and it’s the better known of the two. Founded in 1132, it was the first Cistercian abbey in the north of England, and it was shut down on 3 December 1538, according to English Heritage. It’s the reason Byland’s monks had to move on from Old Byland.

On the hillside above is what Dorothy Wordsworth called Mr Duncombe’s terrace, a long grass walk laid out in the 1750s for Thomas Duncombe II, looking down on the abbey. It’s run by the National Trust. Dorothy walked it in July 1802:

We walked upon Mr. Duncombe’s terrace and looked down upon the Abbey. It stands in a larger valley among a brotherhood of valleys, of different length and breadth,—all woody, and running up into the hills in all directions.

— Dorothy Wordsworth, journal, 15 July 1802, Project Gutenberg

On the same visit she stopped among the ruins themselves:

I could have stayed in this solemn quiet spot till evening, without a thought of moving, but William was waiting for me, so in a quarter of an hour I went away.

— Dorothy Wordsworth, journal, 15 July 1802, Project Gutenberg

Our trip goes to Byland instead, for a quieter 15 minutes. But if you have half a day, Rievaulx is worth it.

Kirkdale: St Gregory’s Minster and its Anglo-Saxon sundial

This is the bit people miss. St Gregory’s Minster is a small church a few miles from Helmsley. Over the south door, inside the porch, is a stone sundial carved in Old English. It records that Orm, son of Gamal, bought St Gregory’s when it was broken down and fallen and had it rebuilt from the ground, in the days of King Edward and Earl Tosti (Tostig). That dates it to about 1055–1065, the years just before the Norman Conquest. The lower text even names the man who made it, Hawarth, and the priest, Brand.

The sundial is in the porch, so you can see it even if the church is locked. Fifteen minutes is plenty.

The Hole of Horcum and the road to Whitby

From Pickering, the A169 climbs onto the open moor and runs north to Whitby. Beside the road is the Hole of Horcum, a huge bowl in the hillside, about 400 feet deep and roughly three-quarters of a mile across. A popular circular walk drops down into it and comes round by Levisham. Beyond it the road crosses miles of open heather before it falls to the coast.

For Whitby itself (the abbey, the 199 steps, and Dracula), see our guide to Whitby Abbey and Dracula.

The North Yorkshire Moors Railway from Pickering

The North Yorkshire Moors Railway is a heritage steam line from Pickering through Levisham, Newtondale Halt and Goathland to Grosmont, with some trains going on to Whitby. It opened in 1836 as the Whitby and Pickering Railway, planned by George Stephenson, closed to passengers in 1965, and was reopened by volunteers in 1973.

• Goathland station played Hogsmeade station in the first Harry Potter film. The village was Aidensfield in the ITV police drama Heartbeat.
• 2026 note: repairs to a bridge near Grosmont affected services beyond Goathland this year. The railway says daily services resume in March 2027. Check its travel updates before you plan a through trip to Whitby.

Charles Dickens remembered an earlier, odder version of this line, when carriages were hauled up the slope at Goathland against a counterweight of water:

In my time that curious railroad by the Whitby Moor was so much the more curious, that you were balanced against a counter-weight of water, and that you did it like Blondin.

— Charles Dickens, letter to Wilkie Collins, 28 August 1861, The Letters of Charles Dickens, vol. 2, Project Gutenberg

(Blondin was the tightrope walker who crossed Niagara Falls. Not the image you want on a train.)

Walks in the North York Moors

Three good choices for a first visit:

Walk	Where	Good for
The escarpment to the White Horse	Sutton Bank	The big view over the Vale of York
Gormire Lake	Below Sutton Bank, on foot only	Woodland and the park’s only natural lake
Hole of Horcum circular	The A169 and Levisham	Open moor and a deep valley

Check the route and distance on the national park’s website before you go. Wear boots, carry a map and a waterproof, and look at the forecast: the moor top is much colder and windier than the valleys, even on a nice day down in York.

All Creatures Great and Small filming locations

People come here looking for James Herriot’s world, and the connection is real, but it’s mostly just off the moors. Herriot practised as a vet in Thirsk, just west of Sutton Bank, and the World of James Herriot museum is there today. The TV series, though, were filmed in the Yorkshire Dales, to the west:

• Channel 5 series (2020 onward): mainly Grassington, which plays the town of Darrowby.
• Original BBC series (from 1978): mainly Askrigg, in Wensleydale.

So Sutton Bank, Herriot’s favorite view, is the one place on this route that ties straight back to him.

Getting to the North York Moors

• From York: the southern edge is an easy drive, and several companies run small-group day tours from York that cross the moors to Whitby with short stops on the way. That’s how I first did this route, and it’s a good way to do it if you don’t want to drive.
• By train: the North Yorkshire Moors Railway starts at Pickering, and Whitby has its own station. Neither gets you to Sutton Bank or Byland. For those you need a car or a tour.
• By car: the A170 runs along the southern edge through Helmsley and Pickering, and the A169 crosses the moor from Pickering to Whitby.
• Where to base yourself: Helmsley, Pickering and Whitby all have places to stay inside or at the edge of the park. York works well if you want the city too: see things to do in York, UK, and Castle Howard, the great house near York where Brideshead Revisited was filmed.

A one-day route: our trip’s moors day

I rode this pattern of short stops on a small-group day tour from York on 28 October 2026, and we built the trip’s Monday around it. On our October 2027 Yorkshire trip the day runs like this (times are our plan and may shift):

Time	Stop
9:30	Sutton Bank: the edge of the moors and the view over the Vale of York (20 minutes)
10:05	Byland Abbey: the grounds (15 minutes)
10:35	Helmsley: coffee in the market square (30 minutes)
11:15	Kirkdale: the Anglo-Saxon sundial (15 minutes)
11:30	Over the moors on the A169, past the Hole of Horcum, to Whitby (about an hour)
12:45	Fish and chips by the harbour, then the abbey, the 199 steps and the harbour
18:00	Dinner at a riverside pub in the Esk valley, then home over the moors

What we don’t do: we don’t ride the steam railway. It was in an earlier plan, but it pushed lunch in Whitby so late nobody would have wanted dinner. We don’t stop at Goathland, and we don’t do Rievaulx or Castle Howard on this day. Castle Howard gets its own day later in the week.