The Yorkshire Dales from the Lake District: The Perfect Contrast Day

Here is the travel bargain hiding on the Lake District's doorstep: less than an hour's drive from Windermere begins a second, entirely different world-class landscape – the Yorkshire Dales, where the mountains give way to vast open moors and deep green valleys laced with thousands of miles of drystone walls, waterfalls pour over limestone steps, a mighty Victorian viaduct strides across the wilderness, and a castle that once imprisoned a queen watches over Wensleydale. For visitors with three or more Lakeland days, a Dales excursion is the connoisseur's move – two of England's greatest national landscapes in one trip – and our full-day Ultimate Yorkshire Dales tour was built precisely for it. Here is what the day holds, and why the contrast is the point.

A different England entirely

Crossing from the Lakes into the Dales is a change of geological author. The Lake District is volcanic and glacial drama – crags, sharp summits, deep cold lakes; the Dales are limestone country – long horizontal skylines, sweeping moor-tops, pale scars and pavements of bare rock, and valleys ("dales", each with its own name, character and cheese-grade reputation) of an almost impossible pastoral greenness. The human landscape changes with the stone: field barns dot the valley floors by the hundred, drystone walls climb ruler-straight over the fells in patterns centuries old, and the villages – solid, grey-gold, clustered round greens – feel a world from Lakeland's whitewash. It is the England of James Herriot's beloved vet stories and a hundred film locations, protected as a national park in its own right (yorkshiredales.org.uk), and its comparative emptiness – the Dales absorb far fewer international visitors than the Lakes – is half its charm: this is the day our guests most often describe as "having England to ourselves".

Ribblehead Viaduct: the wilderness cathedral

The day's great man-made monument rises where the moors are emptiest. The Ribblehead Viaduct – twenty-four arches of blackened stone striding a quarter-mile across the lonely head of Ribblesdale, with the flat-topped peak of Whernside behind – carries the famous Settle–Carlisle railway, the highest main line in England, driven through this wild country in the 1870s at brutal human cost: the navvy armies who built it lived in shanty towns on the moor (with names like Batty Green and Sebastopol), and the line's construction dead lie in the little churchyard nearby. Saved from closure by public campaign in the 1980s, the railway still runs – steam specials included – and the sight of a train crossing the great arches against the moor is one of northern England's defining images. We stop for the full story and the photographs; the viaduct obliges in all weathers, looking if anything grander in mist.

Wensleydale: falls, castle and cheese

The day's green heart is Wensleydale, the broadest and most gracious of the dales. At Aysgarth, the River Ure staircases down three great limestone terraces – the Aysgarth Falls, a beauty spot since Victorian times and a film star in their own right (Kevin Costner's Robin Hood famously fought Little John here). Above the valley stands Bolton Castle, the massive fourteenth-century fortress of the Scrope family, remarkably intact and most famous as the genteel prison of Mary, Queen of Scots, held here in 1568–69 in the early years of her long English captivity – her story, told on the spot with the dale spread below the battlements, is a highlight of the day. And at the dale's head sits Hawes, the quintessential Dales market town – cobbles, inns, ropemakers – and home of the creamery that makes Wensleydale cheese, saved from closure in the 1990s with an unlikely assist from its most famous fans, Wallace and Gromit; the tasting counter considers itself an essential stop, and we agree.

The wild north: Swaledale and the tops

The day's moorland drama belongs to the northern dales. Swaledale, the wildest and most beautiful of them all to many judges, winds between steep bracken fells past stone villages toward Reeth, the sleepy little capital on its sloping green where we pause for lunch and exploring; the drive in, through remote Arkengarthdale – a valley whose very name sounds borrowed from Tolkien, as our guests reliably observe – and out over the vast open sweep of Grinton Moor, delivers mile after mile of the high-and-empty England most visitors never find: heather to every horizon, grouse rocketing from the verges, and views running down the dale until the eye simply gives up. These moor roads, single-track and cattle-gridded, are the Dales at their most elemental – and, our guests note, another place where having a local professional at the wheel converts white knuckles into window-gazing.

Practicalities of the perfect contrast day

The Dales excursion is a full and generously filled day – an early start from Windermere or Ambleside, a big scenic loop through the western and northern dales, and an evening return with the Lakeland fells rising ahead like a homecoming – and it slots best into a visit of three days or more, once the Lake District's own essentials are banked. It suits every season: spring lambs and wildflower meadows (the Dales' traditional hay meadows are a national treasure in June), summer's green intensity, autumn's bronze moors, and winter's stark clarity. Herriot devotees, castle-lovers, railway romantics and cheese loyalists all get their chapter; photographers should treat the viaduct and the Swaledale barns-and-walls country as pilgrimage.

Two national parks, one unforgettable day

Very few places on earth put two utterly different great landscapes within a single day's compass, and our small-group scenic tours exploit the luck to the full: the Ultimate Yorkshire Dales tour departs Windermere and Ambleside with a maximum of seven guests, crosses the watershed, and spends the day among the falls, castles, viaducts and high moors before delivering you back to your Lakeland fireside – England's two finest national parks, bagged in one trip. The Lakes will always be the headline of your visit. The Dales, our guests keep telling us, are the encore they never expected – and the one they talk about all the way home.

This article is part of our scenic Lake District guides collection – twenty in-depth guides researched and written by our local team. Browse the full library on our Travel Guide Library.