Hf holidays

Rick’s the first person to acknowledge that his tours don’t go everywhere, and he doesn’t offer walking tours, so yours sounds like it’ll be a good experience. Do they offer any suggestions about what to pair with your trip with them? Maybe they can even offer help on how to add that extension on your own.

Plenty of discussion about other tour companies in this forum, as noted RS knows they're not the only option out there. Others have mentioned this company, here's just one post
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/england/hf-holidays-cotswolds-thoughts (find more by searching for "HF Holidays" using the search bar at the top of the page)

Thank you for the link to the old post. It's very helpful.
I just found out about Hf group chat. I'll post my questions there.

If you are going straight from one to the other then you have basically 6 hours to transfer between houses. In the case of Southern Yorkshire that is to Skipton for their private transfer/service bus 210 or 211/taxi to Newfield Hall, Malham.

Thus either the North York Moors (Whitby) or the Peak District (Dovedale or the new house at Buxton) are best.

From Whitby, bus to York, then train changing at Leeds. From Buxton I would personally do train to Manchester, then bus to Skipton changing at Burnley.

They must hire a hotel to do Dorset, as they don't have their own house there.

I'm going to be pedantic on geography before anyone gets confused or actually lost.

The phrase "Southern Yorkshire Dales" was a bad choice from the company, the Yorkshire Dales National Park stretches across the West-Yorkshire and North-Yorkshire local government areas. The word dale shows the very old Viking influences in the north of england, and means valley, as does dal in most of Scandinavia. Yorkshire Dales (South) would have been harder to get wrong

The second line of the question just says Southern Yorkshire, and that is not where you will be in his tour (although you might get very close to South-Yorkshire on the Peak District tour). Any travel enquires you do for the Dales tour searching on Southern Yorkshire is likely to go wrong, but Southern Dales might work..

As for transfers between tours, the key is the start and end days, I've had a look and the are not all the same. If the end day of the Peak District or North Yorkshire Moors tours are the same as the start day of the Dales tour then they are quite easy to link, both start with a road transfer (Derby or Scarborough) then a train to Leeds and then the same train to Skipton. Rail journey around 2½ hours, transfer to railway 30-60 minutes. Dorset and South Downs are probably too far but Dorset scenery would be a very good contrast to the Dales as well as less chance of rain! Would it possible to find a Dorset tour that ends the day before the Dales tour starts and spend one night somewhere in between?

I almost went on a walking tour with them but Covid intervened.....

A friend of mine has done several and speaks quite highly of this group.

If we want to get pedantic, then the Yorkshire Dales National Park also extends into the Westmorland and Furness Unitary Authority/Cumbria.
That happened in 1974 when the Dent and Sedbergh area were transferred to the new County of Cumbria (now divided back out again into Cumberland and Westmorland & Furness). That is why the buses into Sedbergh and Dent are all supported by or run by Westmorland (and the police and fire services are Cumbria), but the Tourist Information Centre in Sedbergh is run by the Yorkshire Dales National Park, and is why the building plaque on Dent School refers to it being built by the West Riding Education Department.
To make matters even more complicated that part of Cumbria/Westmorland (or Yorkshire) has Lancaster postcodes, as does much of the southern part of Westmorland.

Likewise in 1974 the Grassington/Skipton/Malham area was transferred from the West Riding of Yorkshire to the new North Yorkshire.

We haven't heard from Lola (also from Seattle), the forum's biggest HF Ambassador for a long time.