About this guide
Changelog
By Jon Cosson · Updated 17 October 2026
A dated record of the substantive changes made to this guide: new pages, reworked sections and corrections, including the ones I would rather not have had to make.
Entries cover changes worth a reader's attention. Wording, layout and typography adjustments are not recorded. Where a change was a correction, the correction is described rather than summarised away.
Verification wording clarified
Verification wording now describes source checks rather than first-hand visits, and first-hand claims have been removed.
Visitor facts corrected
Corrections cover Whitby outside the National Park, dogs at Whitby Abbey, Overbrook being adults only, the deer rut, Pickering Castle dates, railway times and fares, and Feversham Arms hours.
Five-group menu introduced
The menu now has five groups, with Plan My Day highlighted.
Repeated FAQs removed
The repeated FAQ block has been removed and duplicate questions consolidated.
Pub lists rebuilt from shared data
Sunday lunch, pubs with rooms and dog-friendly pub lists now use the pub data.
Village pages reconciled with Places
Village pages have been reconciled with the Places hub.
Seasonal dates centralised
Seasonal dates now come from one shared source.
Wildlife and walk guides expanded
Wildlife and walk pages have been expanded with practical visitor information.
Plan My Day expanded to 63 places
Plan My Day has grown from 29 to 63 places and includes a bus or train filter.
Parking guide added
A new guide brings together parking information for visitors.
Car-free guide added
A new guide covers getting around without a car.
Bus 128 renumbered 28
References to bus 128 have been updated to service 28.
Dalby parking prices corrected
Dalby Forest parking prices have been corrected in the parking guide.
Retiring to the North York Moors
New guide to retiring or moving to the North York Moors: which towns and villages suit which kind of life, National Park planning rules, house prices, council tax, healthcare, buses, broadband and winters.
Dark Skies Station, gravel routes and the Esk
Danby Lodge's Dark Skies Station, the National Park's four new gravel routes in the north of the park, the Glaisdale and Egton Bridge circular, the River Esk pearl mussel project with check, clean and dry advice, and the Mad Alice's Ghost Train dates added to existing pages.
Spotlight
Spotlight: a weekly feature on an event, place or business across the North York Moors, starting with Halloween on the railway.
Bangers & Cash moved
Bangers & Cash pages moved to our Thornton-le-Dale site, with permanent redirects from the old addresses.
Hole of Horcum walk rebuilt
Hole of Horcum walk rebuilt with the National Park's route figures, corrected parking tariff, a step-by-step route and licensed photographs.
Villages, railway fares and Heartbeat locations
Staithes, Hutton-le-Hole and Osmotherley rebuilt with parking, hours and transport; railway fares and timetable page; where Heartbeat was filmed.
Goathland, heather and the villages hub
New guides to Goathland and the heather season; the villages hub rebuilt with parking, toilets, transport and a base-village comparison.
Technical pass
Technical pass: eager hero images, AVIF and WebP for every photograph, author page, structured data cleanup, broken link and placeholders removed, stated check dates.
New page: Christmas in the North York Moors 2026, with an expiring events list.
New page: Christmas in the North York Moors 2026, with an expiring events list. The earlier North York Moors at Christmas page now redirects to /christmas.
Walks: start details added
Walks: start car parks, postcodes, charges, toilets and buses added from National Park, council, Forestry England and National Trust pages.
Goathland deepened; Dalby Forest and Pickering de-duplicated
Dalby Forest now has one clear section for each activity, Pickering separates its town overview from the detailed attractions guide, and Goathland adds its pubs, dog guidance and Mallyan Spout walk facts.
Bangers & Cash hub: auction dates and saleroom pages, shared Mathewsons data, links to the Thornton-le-Dale guide
Two new pages give the remaining Mathewsons auction dates and the practical route to the Pickering saleroom, all four Bangers & Cash pages now share one set of Mathewsons facts and a guide menu, and the museum hours now show both figures Mathewsons publish.
Walks: route notes, sources and a fuller walks hub
All 13 walks now have neutral route notes, existing source attributions and practical facts, with a fuller walks guide and the Hole of Horcum distance aligned across the finders.
Dog-friendly pubs and pubs with a view rebuilt as full lists
Both pages now list every matching pub from the pub database by area, with phone, postcode and directions, and the Cayley Arms at Allerston and the Fox & Rabbit at Lockton are corrected as not allowing dogs inside.
Links, FAQ targets and housekeeping
FAQ answers now point to the page that answers them, Malton joins the villages page, places named in the text link to their own guides, and what's on entries now expire on their own.
Author and date added to every page
Each guide page now names its author and shows the date it was last checked, taken from the page's own stated check date where it has one and from its edit history otherwise.
Five overlapping page clusters merged into one guide each
The guide had grown two or three pages answering the same question, which split the material and helped nobody. Attractions and the top ten places are now part of things to do; where to drink is part of food and drink; the two dog pages have folded into the North York Moors with dogs; the weekend itinerary has folded into the itineraries guide; and classic car country and the Yorkshire road trips guide have folded into the classic car driving routes. Everything unique was carried across first, and all eight old addresses redirect permanently to the page that now answers them.
Three comparison pages added
Whitby or Pickering, Helmsley or Pickering, and Cleveland Way or Coast to Coast. These are questions visitors ask constantly and which were previously answered only in forum threads, so each page gives a straight verdict and says who should do the opposite.
Press and links pages added
A press and citation page setting out how to name and cite the guide, what funds it, which is nothing, and which pages are worth linking to; and a links page collecting the official sites, data sources and local organisations the guide sends readers to. The links page exists because the guide repeatedly tells readers to check an official site before they travel and had not always given them the link.
About and transparency pages added
New pages setting out who writes this guide, how places are checked, and the fact that it carries no advertising, no affiliate links and no paid placements. This changelog was added at the same time.
Ebberston added to site search
The Ebberston village guide existed and was in the sitemap, but had been left out of the site's own search index, so searching for Ebberston here returned nothing. It was the only village page missing.
Route coverage check added
A check that runs in CI on every push, and locally before each commit once the git hook is enabled, comparing every page on the site against the sitemap and the search index, so a new page cannot ship missing from either and a deleted page cannot leave a dead sitemap entry behind. It found the Ebberston omission above.
Content hidden from search engines made visible
The dark skies map, the Whitby dog friendly map and the Plan My Day tool each showed only one item at a time and left the rest out of the page a search engine sees. All of the dark sky venues, all nine dog friendly spots including the seasonal beach ban notes, and the day builder's text are now in the page from the start.
Booking platforms linked
Three accommodation pages named Sykes Cottages, Cottages.com and Booking.com as the places to check availability without linking to any of them. They are now plain links, with no referral code and no earnings to this site.
Allerston cottage reference corrected
The Allerston village page described a cottage that does not exist, and the site search carried the same claim. Both were removed. This was a straightforward error and it should not have been published.
Garage listing removed
A section recommending a vintage petrol pump garage was removed from the classic car country page. This guide has no affiliation with the business and no arrangement of any kind, and a recommendation with nothing behind it does not belong here.
Two guides added to site search
Two published pages had never been added to the site's own search index and could not be found from the search box. An entry for a post that was never published was removed at the same time.
If something here is wrong, or something has changed since I last looked, please get in touch. Corrections are the most useful thing this guide receives.