About this guide

I moved to the edge of the North York Moors after four decades in IT and cyber security in the south, and I have spent the years since getting out into the place properly: the walks, the villages, the coast, the pubs worth the drive and the ones worth the wait. This guide is what I wish I had been able to read before I arrived. It is free, it is independent, and nobody pays to be on it.

There is a longer version of how I came to be here in A New Life in God's Own Country.

Why this guide exists

Most of what is written about the moors falls into one of two shapes. There are thin listing pages that give you a name, a postcode and nothing else, and there are official sites that have to stay even-handed about every place they mention. Neither answers the question a visitor actually has, which is whether somewhere is worth giving up a Saturday for.

This guide is willing to answer that. It says when a place is not worth the drive, when a car park fills by ten on a bank holiday, and when you would have a better day somewhere else a few miles up the road. That is the only real advantage a one-person guide has, and it is the reason this one exists.

What this guide covers

The National Park and the coast that edges it, from Helmsley across to Whitby and down to Scarborough: the villages, the walks, the steam railway, the dark skies, and the classic car country around Thornton-le-Dale that has given the moors a second life on television. The practical pages matter as much as the pretty ones, so the weather, the parking notes and the moorland safety pages get the same attention as the views.

About Jon Cosson

Jon Cosson lives in North Yorkshire, near Thornton-le-Dale on the southern edge of the North York Moors. After a career in cyber security and IT, ending as a chief information security officer, he moved north and now spends his time walking the moors, touring them in the classic cars he keeps, and writing about both. He is an international speaker on the history of code-breaking and on staying safe online.

I write this guide in my own time, and for the pleasure of it.

The other guides I write

The local guides are three village sites covering the places on this side of the moors: thorntonledale.org, the show village with the beck and the thatched cottage, allerston.org, the quiet farming parish just east of it, and ebberston.org, the village on the A170 with the old church and the Georgian hall.

The classic car archives are free non-commercial reference sites written to the same rules as this guide: mgtseries.com, triumphstag.org, acaceca.com, jaguaretype.org, jaguarmk2.com and giuliaspider.com. They are kept separate from this guide because a visitor guide and a marque archive are different jobs, and readers of one rarely want the other. There is also a personal site at joncosson.com.

Corrections

Corrections are welcome and are the most useful thing this guide receives, particularly from people who live here. If a pub has closed, a path has been diverted, a car park has changed its charges or an opening time is wrong, please tell me and I will put it right. Substantive corrections are recorded on the changelog, so you can see what has been changed and when.