Yorkshire Holidays and Coach Tours
Yorkshire is the largest of the English counties and it changes character every twenty miles. Limestone dales in the west, heather moor and fishing villages in the east, and in the middle a walled city with a Gothic minster at its heart. Airedale Tours is a Yorkshire operator, which is why our programme here goes beyond the obvious.
Our holidays are based in one or two hotels — usually York, Harrogate, Leeds or Scarborough — with a driver and coach for the whole stay. Days out cover gardens, National Trust houses, sculpture parks, harbours and Christmas markets.
Frequently Asked Questions About Our Yorkshire Tours
Pick-up points vary by departure, so please ask us when you enquire and we will tell you what is running for the date you are looking at. All our Yorkshire holidays use private coach travel throughout, with the same driver and coach for the whole stay, so once you are aboard you are not changing vehicles or carrying luggage between excursions.
On the tours where National Trust properties appear in the itinerary, entry is included in the price, and if you are a Trust member you simply show your membership card on arrival. Several of our Yorkshire holidays visit Trust properties — Fountains Abbey, Nunnington Hall, the Treasurer's House, Nostell Priory and others. If you want to know exactly what a particular tour includes, ask us and we will send the full details.
Every Yorkshire tour in our programme sets aside a number of single rooms at no supplement — six on some tours, ten on others — and these go on a first-come basis. Beyond that allocation a supplement applies, and it varies by tour. Solo travellers are a normal and welcome part of these groups, not an exception.
More than on a purely scenic tour, less than on a walking holiday. York's centre is cobbled and uneven; garden visits mean gravel paths and some gentle slopes; coastal villages such as Staithes and Robin Hood's Bay involve a steep walk down and back up. You can always sit out an excursion or take it at your own pace. If you have particular concerns about mobility, tell us before you book and we will be straight with you about what a given day involves.
Typically your hotel accommodation, breakfast and evening meals, private coach travel with an experienced driver throughout, the listed excursions and cancellation protection. Some tours also include porterage. Prices are quoted per person sharing a twin or double and are based on a group of 30. The exact inclusions are listed on each tour page, and lunches and drinks are generally not included.
Yes. Any of these itineraries can be run as a Private Group tour for a gardening club, U3A branch, church group or a set of friends, with the whole coach and hotel to yourselves. We can adjust the excursions to suit your group's interests and, where numbers allow, talk to you about a free place. Get in touch with your rough numbers and preferred dates and we will put a costing together.
York as a base for a short break
York packs 2,000 years into a mile-wide circuit of medieval walls, and almost everything worth seeing is inside them. The Minster's East Window is the largest expanse of medieval stained glass in the country. The Shambles still has the meat hooks and the overhanging upper floors of the butchers' street it was in the fifteenth century.
Several of our tours use York hotels, including the Queens Hotel and Fairfield Manor, with excursions into the centre by coach. Classic Jorvik takes in the Castle Museum, the York Art Gallery, the National Railway Museum, a cruise on the Ouse and the Jorvik Viking Centre. The Best of York adds the Minster itself. Because the streets are cobbled, uneven and often busy, we allow plenty of time rather than marching through.
Gardens, houses and the National Trust
Yorkshire has an unusually good spread of gardens within a short drive of one another, which is why we run more than one garden tour here. Beautiful North Yorkshire works out of the Cedar Court Hotel in Harrogate and visits RHS Harlow Carr, Beningbrough, the Himalayan Garden and Sculpture Park and Littlethorpe Manor.
Houses and Gardens of Yorkshire covers Fountains Abbey and the Studley Royal Water Gardens — a Cistercian ruin and an eighteenth-century water garden in one World Heritage landscape — along with East Riddlesden Hall, Goddards and the Treasurer's House in York.
Where a property is National Trust, entry is included in the tour price, and National Trust members simply show their card. If you are a member it is worth bringing it; if you are not, you are not paying twice.
The coast and the North York Moors
The Yorkshire coast is high cliff rather than flat sand for much of its length, cut by steep-sided fishing villages. Whitby has the abbey ruins on the East Cliff, the 199 steps up to them and a harbour that still lands crab and lobster. Staithes and Robin Hood's Bay are both single streets running down to the water, too narrow for coaches, so you walk the last stretch.
Our Scarborough tour is based on the coast for three nights and takes in Whitby, the Bay beach, Nunnington Hall and Scarborough Castle, with evening entertainment at the hotel. Scarborough itself has two bays, a Victorian cliff lift and the headland castle between them.
Inland, the moors turn purple with heather in August and the North Yorkshire Moors Railway runs steam services across them.
Art, industry and Yorkshire food
West Yorkshire's galleries are among the best outside London, largely because the wool money built them and two of the twentieth century's great sculptors came from here. Yorkshire's Cultural Treasures visits the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, the Hepworth Wakefield, York Art Gallery, Nostell Priory and Salts Mill at Saltaire, where Titus Salt's model village mill now holds a large collection of David Hockney's work.
On the food side, The Star Inn Yorkshire is built around a Michelin-starred dinner at The Star Inn the City, with Malton — a genuine market town for food producers — Ryedale Vineyards and York's Chocolate Story alongside it.
- Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Hepworth Wakefield, Henry Moore Institute
- Salts Mill and the Saltaire model village
- Malton market and Ryedale vineyards
- Forced rhubarb from the Wakefield triangle, in season in late winter
