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Country Harvest – a deli-cafe and shop on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales

Friday, March 16th, 2012 by admin
Country Harvest - picture courtesy of Gillian Cowburn

Country Harvest - picture courtesy of Gillian Cowburn

Located in Ingleton and nestled between three wonderful counties – Yorkshire, Cumbria and Lancashire – Country Harvest is a fabulous local foods, outdoor clothing and gift shop with a fully licensed deli-cafe.

You’ll find wonderful gift ideas, hand-crafted jewellery, stylish indoor and outdoor clothing, books, toiletries, an array of children’s toys and games and Country Harvest’s own tempting handmade fudge.

In the Foodhall, you’ll uncover all manner of scrumptious treats from award-winning cheese and olives, cakes, bread, fresh meat, wine and Champagne, along with snacks and drinks to eat on the go.

Gifts, lunch, hand-made fudge and Champagne at Country Harvest in Ingleton - picture courtesy of Gillian Cowburn

Gifts, lunch, hand-made fudge and Champagne at Country Harvest in Ingleton - picture courtesy of Gillian Cowburn

Pop into the Coffee Shop for a superb selection of traditional meals – an afternoon tea, or a hot lunch perhaps, capped with one of Country Harvest’s glorious puddings or delicious traybakes.

If you’re a cookery fan, sign up for Country Harvest’s Cooks’ Club for a host of benefits including all sorts of goodies and discounts off the Cooks’ Club demonstrations (the next two of which are scheduled for Thursday, 17 May (Low Fat Cookery) and Wednesday, 4 July (Cheese Tasting Evening), both kicking off at 7pm, whilst other evenings include Dine & Shop and PMTea Parties.

Further details can be found on Country Harvest’s website here or by calling 01524 242 223.

9 April-8 May: Easter Events in Yorkshire

Friday, April 15th, 2011 by admin
Yorkshire Easter Egg Hunts Galore

Yorkshire Easter Egg Hunts Galore

Easter’s a terrific time for kids and there are loads of Easter egg hunts and other Easter events for families across Yorkshire for you to enjoy – here’s a selection:

Wentworth Castle’s Eggciting Easter Fun for all the Family!
22-29 April

Follow the Easter Trail through the delightful gardens and stunning parkland. Take part in an Easter Egg Hunt and meet Wentworth Wabbit the Easter Bunny!

Burton Agnes Hall’s Easter Egg Hunt
11am-5pm, 24-25 April

Come along and search for chocolate Easter Eggs in the beautiful grounds and along the woodland walk.

Ripley Castle’s Easter Egg Hunt & “Dress the Egg”
10.30am-3.30pm, 23-25 April

Join in the fun with a great Easter Egg Hunt and “Dress the Egg” competition, fabulous prizes to be won!

Swinton Park Easter Egg Hunting Days
16 April – 1 May

Test your detective skills on our Easter Treasure Trail and on Easter Sunday the Easter Bunny will be making a special visit!

Newby Hall & Gardens Easter Fun Days
22-25 April

Come and meet the costumed characters on our woodland trail where they will help you in your quest to find the Newby Treasure!

Brodsworth Hall & Gardens Easter Family Fun Trail
10am – 5.30pm, 22-25 April

Take part in the Easter Egg hunt for a chance to get your hands on a real golden egg!

Bolton Castle’s Easter Eggstravaganza!
18-25 April

Come along and enjoy egg decorating, bonnet making and so much more, as well as the spectacular Eggciting Easter Egg hunt.

Harewood’s Mad Hatter’s Easter Weekend
10.30am – 4.30pm, 22-25 April

Enjoy our Alice in Wonderland themed Easter weekend with face painting, biscuit decorating and a chance to decorate your own tea cup.

Pannett Park’s Easter Egg Hunt
11am – 3.30pm, 23 April

At Pannett Park this Easter there is the traditional Easter Egg hunt, Easter egg rolling, Easter bonnet competition and so much more.

Thorp Perrow’s Easter Treasure Hunt
7-26 April

Solve the clues on our Treasure Hunt, a great game for everyone.

Harlow Carr’s East Egg Hunt
11am – 4pm, 22-25 April

Visit the Easter Bunny in his burrow and join the hunt for the giant eggs he has hidden around the garden, collect as many as you can to claim a delicious chocolate treat.

Sutton Park’s Easter Sunday Children’s Treasure Hunt
24 April

Come and enjoy our Treasure Hunt.

Bolton Abbey’s Eggciting Easter Egg Hunt
10am – 4pm, 22-25 April

Join the Easter Bunny and have a look in Strid Wood for all the hidden eggs.

Whitby Abbey’s Easter Family Fun Trail
22-25 April

Want to get your hands on a real golden egg? Come along and take part in our fantastic Easter egg hunt in Whitby.

RSPB Old Moor Easter Egg Hunt
24 April

Solve the clues which are hidden around our reserve which will lead you to a splendid chocolate treat!

Beck Isle Museum of Rural Life Easter Egg Trail
24 April

Come along and enjoy our Easter Egg Trail

More Easter Egg Hunts in Yorkshire

More Easter Egg Hunts in Yorkshire

Beningbrough Hall & Gardens Easter Egg Hunt & Olympics!
23-25 April

Join us for the Easter Olympics with Eggtastic races and take part in our Cadbury sponsored East trail.

Rievaulx Terrace’s Family Easter Egg Trail
11am – 5pm, 9-18 April

Easter weekend packed full of fun for all the family, take part in our special Easter trail.

Duncombe Park’s Easter Craft Fair
10am – 5pm, 24-25 April

A delightful Easter Craft Fair.

Nunnington Hall Easter Egg Trail
11am – 5pm, 9 April – 8 May

Take part in our Easter Family Trail and receive a Cadbury egg to take away with you.

Fountains Abbey & Studley Royal Cadbury Easter Fun
11am – 4pm, 24-25 April

Join us this Easter for face painting, game playing and enjoy the Easter trails and don’t forget to collect your chocolate ‘Egghead’

Fountains Abbey & Studley Royal Easter Eggsploits
From 2pm, 25 April

Come along with your decorated hard boiled eggs and take part in our best decorated egg and egg rolling competitions.

Brimham Rocks Easter Trail
11am – 4pm, 23 April

Solve the puzzles on our Easter trail in the search for your Easter surprise!

Bridestone, Crosscliff and Blakey Topping’s Bridestone Easter Egg Trail
10am – 3pm, 24 April

Follow the clues around the Easter trail to find your Easter treat.

Ormesby Hall’s Easter Egg-static
1.30pm – 4pm, 22-25 April

Come and have fun in our beautiful garden whilst looking for the answers to the Easter quiz.

East Riddlesden Hall Easter Egg Hunt
22-25 April

Complete the trail around the garden and claim your chocolate surprise.

The Lord Mayor’s Easter Egg Hunt, York
10am – 1pm, 23 April

Take part in the city-wide search for chocolate, work out the answer to the puzzles to visit 6 locations around the city and collect a treat at each stop!

Tropical Butterfly House Easter Egg Hunt
10am – 5.30pm, 24-25 April

Join our Easter Egg Hunt to win a chocolate surprise.

Knaresborough Easter Fayre
9am – early evening, 22 – 23 April

Come along for a family fun day out with market stalls, street entertainment, fairground rides and plenty more.

Once Easter’s over, you can find a superb list of Christmas markets and Christmas fayres in Yorkshire here.

Make the most of Yorkshire’s current high profile

Tuesday, April 5th, 2011 by admin
Programmes like ITV's The Dales are helping to raise Yorkshire's profile

Programmes like ITV's The Dales are helping to raise Yorkshire's profile - picture courtesy of ITV

How tourism businesses can benefit from media attention on Yorkshire

Many of you will have watched the new fly-on-the-wall series on the Yorkshire Dales fronted by Adrian Edmondson last Monday (second episode on tonight, 8pm, ITV).

And if you did watch it, you weren’t alone as over 4.4 million people tuned in, and a good proportion of them then turned to the Internet to find out more information about the programme and the Dales.

Blog articles are a perfect way of driving more traffic to your business’s website, and if you can mention a variety of key phrases about the subject you’re writing about, your blog will get picked up by the search engines for a wide variety of searches.

And the more you blog, the more times the search engines will visit your site and list your articles in their results pages.

And if you make sure you link from your blog back to the main pages of your website so that visitors can see what it is you offer, you’ll increase the likelihood of them staying on your site and remembering your business for future reference.

See some great pics of Adrian Edmondson in The Dales

Watch last week’s episode on ITV player

Royal Wedding and Public Holidays

This year, April will really kick start the tourism season with an extra public holiday at the end of the month as people celebrate the Royal wedding (and there are many street parties organised throughout our region, with 67 roads closed to allow residents to revel in safety - read more here).

In fact there are 4 public holidays in the next 28 days, and with all the recent TV series promoting Yorkshire, our region is set to be a popular destination for long weekends and Easter breaks.

Things to remember in the lead up to the bumper public holidays:

  • make sure your website’s up to date
  • respond to email enquiries as quickly as possible, as competition is fierce
  • keep blogging whenever you get a spare moment

14-17 April: Celebrate 100 years at the Harrogate Spring Flower Show

Friday, March 25th, 2011 by admin
Harrogate Spring Flower Show 2011

Harrogate Spring Flower Show 2011

The North of England Horticultural Society celebrates its centenary this year, and you can enjoy the festivities at the 2011 Harrogate Spring Flower Show.

Hosting an array of exciting new show gardens, the dazzling flower halls, numerous live demonstrations, floral art, the cookery theatre and The Garden Roadshow, there really is something for everyone whether you’re new to gardening or an ‘old hand’, you can go and learn how to enjoy your garden to the full.

There will be lots of opportunities to taste some of Yorkshire’s superb locally grown and produced food, whilst a wide variety of plants and flowers will be available should you be after any new additions for your garden.

There will be something for everyone:

Show Gardens – this is the first year Outside Show Gardens will be at the show, and the theme is sustainability

Nursery Displays – horticultural nurseries from all over the UK will be displaying

Kitchen Garden Live – advice on how to ‘grow your own’ with live demonstrations on fruit and vegetable growing

Gardening with Nature – learn how to encourage birds and other wildlife into your garden

Cookery Theatre – watch experienced chefs cooking with local, fresh produce

Floral Art – flower arranging demonstrations and fabulous exhibitions in the Floral Art marquee

Garden Roadshow – talks and Q&A sessions on a wide range of gardening topics

Photographic Competition – just bring your gardening shots to the Garden Roadshow marquee to be in with a chance of winning

Children’s Discovery Zone – plenty of fun activities for the kids, including competitions

Foods Marquee – this popular marquee will be packed to the rafters with fine foods, meat, dairy, treats, wines and spirits

Craft, Gifts and Horticultural Shopping – a spectacular array of gardening and outdoor stalls

Tickets are on sale now – see here for more information.

And don’t forget to book your Harrogate hotels or Harrogate bed and breakfast in advance.

On Ilkley Moor – with a hat

Tuesday, March 8th, 2011 by admin
ilkley moor

Ilkley Moor on a sunny March afternoon - photograph courtesy of Chris Jones

There’s some sense behind the well-known Yorkshire song “On Ilkley Moor Baht ‘At”. It can be cold, remote and forlorn in bad weather. But, on the right day, Ilkley Moor is a marvellous place for a walk. Sunday 6 March was just such a day – cold and crisp but with blue skies and a bright sun.

We accessed the Moor from the southern edge, via an entrance by a farm just above East Morton on the Otley Road. The public footpath was clearly marked from the beginning, and was along an unmade road, designed for farm vehicles. After about a 3/5 mile, the footpath splits off to the right. There is a sign but we managed to miss it and ended up on a “private road“, though not sure if that sign has any legal significance since the passing of the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000.

Ilkley Moor - photograph courtesy of Chris Jones

Ilkley Moor - photograph courtesy of Chris Jones

We didn’t go far as we had our two-year-old grandson with us, but really enjoyed the stunning views across the moors and down the Aire Valley and across to the Worth Valley. The towns of Bingley and Keighley, and the village of Haworth were all visible, and the vista brought to mind visions of Cathy and Heathcliff, as Haworth is the location of the Brontë Parsonage where Emily Brontë and her sisters Anne and Charlotte wrote their most important works.

Red grouse on Ilkley Moor - photograph courtesy of Chris Jones

Red grouse on Ilkley Moor - photograph courtesy of Chris Jones

We also enjoyed the wildlife (including plenty of red grouse) and the chance to stretch our legs. We turned back after a mile or so and retraced our steps, enjoying the scenery from a different perspective on the way back. As we neared the end of the footpath there was a small copse of trees on the left which was a haven for chaffinches, singing away at the tops of their voices, full of the joys of spring.

We returned to the car having had a leisurely but bracing walk – and the grandson enjoyed it too.

Chris Jones

Chaffinch on Ilkley Moor - photograph courtesy of Chris Jones

Chaffinch on Ilkley Moor - photograph courtesy of Chris Jones

If you’re looking for holiday accommodation in Ilkley, check out some of the lovely properties on Hello Yorkshire.

4-21 November: 24th Leeds International Film Festival

Friday, September 24th, 2010 by admin
24th Leeds International Film Festival

24th Leeds International Film Festival

The hugely popular Leeds International Film Festival will open this year with one of the most anticipated films of the year – The King’s Speech – a British historical drama starring Colin Firth as King George VI along with a highly acclaimed cast including Helena Bonham-Carter, Geoffrey Rush, Guy Pearce, Michael Gambon, Timothy Spall, Derek Jacobi and Anthony Andrews.

The film festival is the largest in England outside London and will show over 200 films at various venues throughout the city.

Film festival passes and tickets are available from the LIFF Box Office in The Carriageworks, Millennium Square. Tickets can also be bought online – please see the LIFF website.

And if you’re looking for a place to stay in Leeds during the festival, have a look on Hello Yorkshire for Leeds hotels and Leeds B&Bs.

21-23 October: Grassington Players stage Oscar Wilde play

Sunday, September 12th, 2010 by admin

Grassington Players will be staging as their autumn production Lord Arthur Savile’s Crime, from a short story by Oscar Wilde originally published in 1897 and adapted for the stage by Constance Cox.  Satirising upper class morality this is an entertaining black comedy.  Lord Arthur learns from a palmist that he is destined to commit a murder, and worried that this should not affect his forthcoming marriage, sets about a series of unsuccessful attempts to murder a much loved aunt.

The performance will take place in the Town Hall at Grassington, and tickets are £7 for adults, £4 for children.

If you’re looking for accommodation in the area, try the Grassington B&Bs or Yorkshire Dales holiday cottages on Hello Yorkshire.

Squids In! – Sea Baits

Wednesday, June 30th, 2010 by admin
Squids in Fishing Bait

Successful sea fishing starts with the right bait. Get yours from Squids In

Squids In! – Sea Baits is a company which specialises in supplying bait for sea fishing at bargain basement prices. As well as supplying to Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, they also supply to the whole of the UK via mail order.

They’ve got a huge range of live and frozen sea baits. pike baits and  preserved baits – though live baits aren’t available by mail order with one or two exceptions.

The business is run by Scott Richardson and Steve Foster – both passionate anglers who know baits inside out. The range includes frozen blacks, soft shell and peeler crabs, razors, loligo, calamari, and baby squid, plus the recently added blueys which, according to Scott, are taking the angling world by storm. Fresh worms and peeler crabs can also be supplied, subject to seasonal availability.

The business has a really useful website – with links and information just about every aspect of angling, including an online forum where any matter relating to sea fishing and baits can be discussed. There’s also a photo gallery, where proud anglers display the “ones that didn’t get away” (including a few record-breaking catches, garnered with the help of bait from Squids In! – Sea Baits). The links page has a huge variety of links – many of them directly related to sea fishing both at home and abroad – and is well worth checking out.

If you’re after Yorkshire accommodation for your next fishing trip, try Whitby B&B or bed and breakfast Scarborough on Hello Yorkshire.

Up to 30 August: Steam-Hauled Trains Wensleydale Railway

Sunday, June 20th, 2010 by admin

With so much to see and do throughout the Yorkshire Dales, the Wensleydale Railway is an outstanding day out for families, tourists and rail enthusiasts – great value and great fun.

The railway winds through 16 miles of James Herriot and JMW Turner country, taking in the best of the National Park with its terrific walking and cycling spots, Aysgarth Falls and the market towns of Leyburn and Bedale.

And from now until (and including) Monday 30 August (with the exception of 9, 10 and 11 August), the railway are running steam-hauled trains from Leeming Bar and Redmire. The steam locomotive is an ex-British Rail Standard Class locomotive (No. 80105), one of only 14 to have been preserved. Built in 1955 at Brighton Works, it was rescued from a scrapyard in Barry in the early 1970s, returning to service 10 years ago at Bo’ness and Kinneil Railway.

For further details, and a full timetable, check out the Wensleydale Railway here.

And if you’re looking for accommodation in the area, try Yorkshire Dales accommodation such as Yorkshire Dales cottages and bed and breakfast in the Yorkshire Dales on Hello Yorkshire.

26 September: Penny Plain Afloat

Sunday, June 20th, 2010 by admin
Summer Mummers

Summer Mummers

This will be your last chance to see “Summer Mummers” (this year’s Penny Plain Theatre Company show). They’ll be taking a canal boat trip and will be travelling from Skipton to Kildwick.

Known as Hardcastle’s men (and viewed as a dishevelled bunch of travelling Victorian thespians), this summer show will see them arriving very tired and grumpy to reluctantly perform for ‘the hat’ (which is known to be a pastoral selection of dances, folk songs and a Yorkshire Mummers Play).

The show transports the audience back to a bucolic Victorian summer. It will showcase the various talents, from a breathtaking rapper sword dance to a maypole shambles, and will include traditional folk anthems and plenty of summer spirit (of the alcoholic kind!!!).

Andrew Jackson, Company Founding Member, had outlined the fact that spending an afternoon on the canal would be a perfect ending to a very successful tour, and it will also provide the opportunity for The Company to perform the show for locals to enjoy.

The FREE half hour Show will start at 11.15am at The Canal Basin in Skipton before boarding the canal boat.  Then, they’ll travel east on the Leeds-Liverpool canal, where the Company will make a stop to make another performance, the venue being The White Lion based in Kildwick. 2.00pm is their anticipated time of arrival. Boarding again, after returning the boat to Skipton at 5pm, they’ll be travelling on to their final show of the day – which starts at 6pm, and the venue for the final performance is The Tempest Arms, Elslack.

To find out more about the “Summer Mummers” show (and view photographs too) please visit the Penny Plain Theatre website.

And if you’re after accommodation in the Dales, try Yorkshire Dales accommodation such as bed and breakfast in the Yorkshire Dales or Yorkshire Dales cottages on Hello Yorkshire.