Planning month long trip to Yorkshire, Lake District, and possibly Scotland

Ideally you would want to fly into Manchester or maybe Glasgow or Edinburgh rather than London. There are no direct flights into MAN from the west coast - the nearest would be Las Vegas, but there are plenty of one-stop options. Dublin would be a good choice as it gives you US pre-clearance on the return flight. There may be a direct flight into Scotland?

I don’t know any detail about HF Holidays but they would be a good option if your priority is walking in the British countryside. That would avoid the need to drive.

Otherwise you could still do it without a car or perhaps best, cut down on the length of car hire. Coming into MAN you can get a direct train to York (or the Lakes for that matter). But don’t rule out the Peak District NP as a starting point - it’s right by MAN Airport.

As to timing I would go April or ideally May. You just want to avoid the first two weeks of April or the last in May as it’s school holidays. Neither would be a deal breaker, but just less busy and cheaper.. By May you have very long days and usually drier and warmer weather (although nothing can be guaranteed.

September could also be a good month to pick. Schools are back but weather often very pleasant.

Agree with not flying into London if you can help it.

Thanks for the quick response! Had not considered flying into Manchester, so thanks for the tip. Is it best to pick up a car at the Manchester airport or take train to Yorkshire or Peak District first? What are the trusted sites to look for holiday let or hotel in England?

If going to the Peak District there is a direct bus every hour to Buxton, which connects directly into the Trans Peak bus which runs across the area as far as Derby. Although Buxton or Bakewell (on the TP bus route) are good bases.

It is far from too late to book for April. None of these areas are like Edinburgh or the Isle of Skye- with booking to implausibly long time frames. Other than the May Holiday weekends (first and last of the month, and the 2nd of those is by far the busier) there will be no issue with lack of accommodation (unless you have a very keen price point) in the Lake District or the Yorkshire Dales.
Whatever other people might write you will have no difficulty getting around by public transport, at least in the Lake District.

There are also local tour buses in the Lakes run by the highly respected Mountain Goat bus company, in small minibuses (not full sized coaches).

HF Holidays pick you up at each Holiday Centre from a nearby railhead although their Lake District house also has an hourly public bus.

There are a number of local companies who provide cottage holidays- Sally's Cottages is probably the biggest, and one of the longest established.

If you were going to Keswick they have their own town booking portal- hard to get more trusted and direct than that- https://www.keswick.org/

Thank you for your input. Great to know that I still have time to plan, since it feels like a very daunting task. In terms of being in the Yorkshire Dales and Moors areas, what are villages or towns (that has the country feel and views) to stay as a base. Such that we can stay around for a week and travel from there and do walks in the surrounding countryside? It will be ideal to have a base a week at the time to give us time to explore the area and just relax. We have gone on tours where we stay in each place for two days and move on, so this time, we want to do it at a slower pace and be able to just enjoy the countryside. Any suggestions would be very appreciated.

For the North York Moors, think about Pickering or Helmsley - bnoth busy small towns on the southern edge of the moors and giving good access to the surrounding countryside

There is more choice in the Dales - off the top of my head. Larger places - Skipton, Settle/giggleswick, Hawes, Richmond.

Smaller villages,Malham, Clapham, Ingleton, Horton in Ribblesdale, Kettlewell, Grassington, Askrigg, Reeth...

The Yorkshire Dales covers a much larger area and you may want to have two bases: one for the southern area and one for the north.

Bradt publish what they describe as Slow Guides and have one covering the North York Moors and Yorkshire Wolds
and another covering the Yorkshire Dales. They also have one ffor the Peak District too.

It might be worth getting hold of copies of these as they will give lots of information about things to do and see.

You queried whether to pick up a car at MAN on arrival. Please do not do this. You will will be coming off a long red eye flight, planning to take a car on to very busy roads on what for you is the "wrong" side with a strange car driving with different road rules jet lagged. I would advise this of anyone claiming confidence, let alone those who start off nervous. Luckily as we have pointed out, it is easy to get to a first base whether in the Peak District or Yorkshire very easily.

That is not to say that driving is very difficult. The great majority of North Americans adjust fine to driving over here - there is only the very occasional Anne Sacoolas. You should just give yourselves the best possible start by being fresh and well rested and allowing some time to adjust.

What I would suggest is that you fly in, then transfer to the Peak District. Then go up to the Lake District using Buxton as your rail head.
Then go to the Dales. The transfer can be the obvious rail route via Carlisle for the train. But you can also route via Penrith for direct buses to the less well known towns/villages of Appleby, Kirkby Stephen, Langwathby or Lazonby (depending on the day of the week) then the Settle-Carlisle train down to Garsdale (for Hawes and Wensleydale) using the Little White Bus, or to Skipton for Grassington and that kind of area.
Then back to Garsdale or Skipton (or other variances) to transfer to the North Yorkshire Moors (via Leeds and York).

Little White Bus also transfer you all the way down Wensleydale for connections to Northallerton- for trains to York and Thirsk [James Herriot]. A nice scenic route, also gets you to the Wensleydale Heritage Railway. Note also the Red Squirrel special bus which Little White Bus run. Sunday is the best day to be in the Dales as there is a dense network called Dales Bus operates that day.

On the North Yorkshire Moors a similar Sunday network runs- Moorsbus

Then finally train direct York to Manchester Airport for flight home. On public transport I think Pickering is your best base on the NY Moors.

Wow, thanks for all these input and recommendations. It definitely makes sense to not to rent a car right away from Manchester airport and give us a few days to settle down first. You all gave me a lot of information to digest and look into. I like the idea of taking the rail/train as much as possible to avoid driving. I read about the Two Together Rail card. Does it make sense to get one? Seems like Buxton is definitely a good first place to visit since it has the Transpeak to take us around the popular places so we don't need a car to go around the peak district. May be take the rail from Buxton/Manchester area to York before renting a car? Or is it worth the drive to go through scenic area between Peak District and the Yorkshire Moors? Thanks again for all the great information and input!

Yes a 2 Together Railcard would make sense, depending how many trains you are using. To make it pay you have to take an aggregate of £90 of rail journeys between the two of you, and travel after 0930 on weekdays.

If your only trains are Buxton to Man to York and maybe Lake District to Man Apt you won't get anywhere near that figure if you buy your tickets with care and ahead of time.

It's busy freeway Manchester to York if you aren't routing via the Lake District on the way to Yorkshire, so not exactly an exciting drive, or maybe I am too familiar with it.
There is an Enterprise Car Rental office actually at York Station. While I believe you could 'do' Yorkshire without a car it would make life that bit easier. Are you happier to drive in the UK than your husband.
In the Lake District the Enterprise depots are at Penrith and Kendal (and one out west here between Workington and Whitehaven, about 4 miles from me), plus Barrow in Furness in the deep south of the County.

I like the idea of taking the rail/train as much as possible to avoid driving.

There's a good idea! My husband and I were delighted to be able to go by train as much as possible in England.

There are many good small bus tours in the areas of England you have mentioned. One that is used by many members of this forum is Rabbies tours. Check out their trips to see if any replace routes you had contemplated driving. They pick up from several different cities. (Manchester, London, Edinburgh, Bath & more)
https://www.rabbies.com/en
https://www.rabbies.com/en/england-tours
https://www.rabbies.com/en/scotland-tours

There is another small bus tour company like this one operating in Yorkshire, with trips to the areas you have mentioned, but I don't remember the name of it. I'm sure isn31c will be able to recall it for you. I believe they pick up in York and go to all your Yorkshire places of interest.

The Lake District has an extensive bus network, in case you decide to go with that instead of a car.
Rabbies has several tours that include the Lake District: https://www.rabbies.com/en/england-tours/see/lake-district-tours

Hopefully, using the train, small bus tours and some driving, you can get to all the places on your list.

I believe the Yorkshire company Rebecca is thinking of is the same Mountain Goat company as mentioned above in the Lake District. The Lake District is their historical home, but they have expanded in recent years to other areas.
In fact you could also sneak in a day trip to North Wales from Manchester with Mountain Goat if you wanted. You couldn't do that North Wales itinerary in a day by public transit, and it would cost more for a days car hire + petrol (gas) costs, parking etc.

Sorry if that's just added in an unwanted complication to you!

By the way I have rented from Enterprise in the past and have been perfectly satisfied with them.

Thank you for all the tours information! All the information I am getting from here is so useful and I am feeling less anxious about the planning. I will definitely look into getting the Bradt and Slow Travel guidebooks. My husband usually does most of the driving and I do the planning. With the information I am getting here, it definitely looks like we can reduce the amount of driving that he will have to do than we have initially anticipated. When I looked into rental cars, it seems like there are limited automatic transmission cars available, but we will definitely want an automatic to reduce the stress of left-handed shifting. BTW, I was looking into flights from San Francisco to Manchester (going to UK in mid-April and returning the US in mid-May), the airfares are from $600+ (Aer Lingus) to $900+ (British Airlines and others). That's a big difference between Aer Lingus and other airlines. I have never heard of Aer Lingus (and using Emerald Airlines from Dublin to Manchester). Are they reliable and safe?

Aer Lingus are the National airline of the Republic of Ireland, and Emerald are their short haul, regional, division. Technically Emerald are a franchise operator, but for all realistic and ticketing purposes they are one airline.
Thus if the long haul sector is late, you will be transferred to the next flight for the short haul leg.
Emerald are only about 2 years old- the successor of Stobart Air (who started life as Aran Air, and went bankrupt in Covid) so have a solid background.
Many people on here are very happy with Aer Lingus long haul. As a national airline they have a great background and a good safety record.

As isn31c says Aer Lingus are Ireland's national airline with a long history and are now also part of IAG, the group that owns British Airways and Iberia.

As I pointed out earlier flying via Dublin has the great advantage going home of US pre-clearance in Dublin as well. In an era of high flight prices $600 from the west coast sounds a keen price and I doubt you would have got anything much cheaper into London anyway.

There are more and more automatic cars in the UK market these days and as more electric cars become available that will only increase. You may well find the latter an option to hire and whether you want to do that would be a whole new thread!

I’ve flown Emerald a bunch of times from my local airport in England across to Belfast and they’re absolutely fine. Pleasant planes and staff. No issues at all (other than one understandable cancellation due to extremely high winds).

Regarding the airfare you've found on Aer Lingus....
The conventional wisdom here on the forum is when you find a great price on airfare for the dates you want, book it.
Prices tend to go up as you get closer to the date of travel (as I'm sure you know).
You may find a great price on airfare, wait several days to go back and book it, and the great deal is gone.
Make sure it's what you want while you have it shown on your computer screen,
then buy it to get the great deal.

We got the tickets to fly from SF to Manchester with Aer Lingus! $600 each, so it is a great price. Now I can really start to plan the trip in earnest. I started looking into rental cars, and it seems that Arnold Clark is the only one that will allow picking up in one place (such as York) and return in another (such as Carlisle) without charging over $3000 (such as Enterprise). Is Arnold Clark is acceptable rental place because I have not heard of them before? They seem to have limited place where you can pick up and drop off. The other option is to rent a car in Buxton (when we leave the Peak District) and keep it for the rest of the trip. Our current trip plan is to start in Buxton (since we are flying into Manchester), spend 5 days in Peak District area, go to York/Yorkshire Moors area for another 5 days or so, head to Yorkshire dales for about 10 days, then onto the Lake District and head down to Manchester area for a day before going home. We would prefer to have less days with the cars since it may be possible to be in the Lake District without a car. At the same, picking up and returning the car to the same place for about 25 days costs the same as picking it up in York and returning it at Carlisle. Does anyone know if Enterprise has a place for drop off around the Yorkshire Dales?
Also, the car rental appears to include insurance for the car only. How do we get insurance for injuries to people if there is an accident?
Again, thanks so much for all the information and suggestions I have received so far!

Keighley and Leeds/Bradford airport are the Enterprise locations for the Dales.
Keighley is useful as that is a railway station on the Settle/Carlisle rail route shared with the Keighley and Worth Valley steam heritage line.
From LBA you would have to get a bus into Leeds.
Arnold Clark are a very reputable name in the UK rental market. In Scotland they are Celtic Legend, who many folk on this forum are very happy with.

I think Isn31c means that Arnold Clark operate as Celtic Legend in the US. They are a well respected car dealership and car rental business based in Scotland but have a number of bases in England. They are one of the largest car dealers in Europe.

No, I wrote what I meant.
Celtic Legend are a UK company, who rent/hire cars to any nationality, including UK nationals.
They do not operate in the US, but do it seems also in England (as well as Scotland), including at Manchester Airport.

Check out the Celtic Legend website Johnew52... It clearly states

Celtic Legend is based in our beautiful capital city of Edinburgh.

So many Americans use the company, it is a common misconception that it is based in the States.

Thanks for the info on Arnold Clark. We will definitely consider renting from them since they provide the cheapest rate for drop off at a different location then York. When in the Peak District, we would like to visit Dovedale. I see that the Transpeak will go from Buxton to Thorpe but not into Dovedale. Is there another way to get into Dovedale without walking from Thorpe? Currently, I have it planned so far to take the rail from Buxton to York on a Friday, stay in York over the weekend and pick up a car on a Monday since we cannot get a car on a weekend. I assume we can get around York without a car. I found an interesting B&B in Rosedale, inside the moors. Given we will have a car by then, am I right to assume that it would not be an issue to drive in and out from moors to surrounding areas? My husband is used to driving an SUV (Forester) but he thinks we should rent an economy size car since we have heard that country roads are very narrow.

Roads are narrow. And you will be driving on the "wrong" side of the road. And the whole car will be a mirror image of a car in the US. So adjusting to where your "four corners" are takes some getting used to. For those reasons we always rent as small as available but also always rent automatic so one less right/left thing to worry about.

Question 2- Yes, you can drive anywhere from Rosedale.

One of the roads out of the village, which you can use if you want to, but don't have to- unless you like a challenge- is called Rosedale Chimney. At a peak gradient of 33% it is the steepest motor road in Europe. We won't call you chicken if you don't use it!!

Google it

Question 1- I'm travelling tonight so can't check my maps and timetables. But Dovedale used to have a bus service. Don't know if it still has.
For all bus information in Derbyshire check. www.derbysbusinfo

The local public transport integrated ticket for bus and train is called the Derbyshire Wayfarer. Google that. I don't know how long the offer is on for but the web Site says that a 7 day bus only ticket is on offer currently for £21.
If that's right then it's a stunning bargain.
Oh, and your bus airport to Buxton will cost £2 under the government scheme.

Thanks for all the very useful input. No, we won't be driving the steep grade of 33% in Rosedale, even though we also have our steep grade in the streets of San Francisco!

Questions:
1) Is Rosedale a good area to be a base in the Moors or it is better to stay in villages like Helmsley or Pickering?
2) We would like to visit York for a couple of days. Where is a good place to stay that is not too expensive? Is it better to visit York on weekdays instead of weekends?
3) Any suggestions for search sites for cottages/holiday let in the Yorkshire Dales areas (Settle? and other villages suggestions)? Don't know which ones are trustworthy.

We definitely want to stay in the Keswick area in the Lake District so will be looking into Sally Cottages site (as suggested here) for self-catering cottages. I have come to realize that their cottages have restrictions on when to start a rental -- no starting mid-week and has to start the rental on a Friday or Saturday. Took me a while to recognize that. Learning something new everyday!

Again, thanks for all the input from so many people! All of your inputs are great and have been very helpful!

[Rosedale][1] is lovely but a small settlement - the buildings have just clustered together there. You won't find the same facilities there as you will in either Pickering or Helmesley which are much bigger towns with shops... Rosewdale would be great if you are planning to do a lot of walking from there but not so good if you are wanting to explore the wider area.

Thanks for all the feedback. Much appreciated!

Current tentative plan is to stay a few days in East Rosedale because the Ann's Cottage and The Old Smithy B&B sounded nice to be staying inside the Moors, and then we will stay in a B&B in Pickering for a few days. Staying in Pickering will also allow us to take the train into York for a day instead of driving as well as takes the North Moors Train to Whitby. Then we will move on to the Dales. Am now wondering where to stay in the Dales -- Settle, Skipton or in the middle of the Dales. If we split the time between the north and south part of the Dales, any recommendations where to stay in the north? Or find a place in the middle? We would like to rent a cottage instead of B&B. Between Settle or Skipton, which one is better as a base? Or Grassington?

Hi cjkmlweber -

Re accommodation in the Dales, Skipton and Settle are larger towns on the fringe of The Dales proper. The same could be said of Grassington, but less so. I love Grassington, I live fairly close by, but it does get packed, there’s no denying it. For a more ‘village-y’ experience you could try further up Wharfedale at Kettlewell, Starbotton or Buckden or even as high up as Hubberholme, this latter being no more than a hamlet. But a hamlet with an excellent pub! (The George).

For the northern Dales Hawes is the ‘big’ town, but you might want to venture further north to Keld or Thwaite, both of which are tiny, more remote villages. Down Swaledale you’ll find Muker and Gunnerside, with the larger Reeth further down the valley. At Keld you’re only a few miles away from the Tan Hill Inn, England’s highest pub, which sits in glorious elevated isolation on the moors. I’ve stayed at Butt House in Keld and it was excellent and the nearby, but more off-the-beaten-track, Frith Lodge (I think) gets good reviews from friends who have stayed there. Keld is the junction of the Wainwright Coast to Coast and Pennine Way trails and the Herriot Way passes nearby, so this area has lots of hikers passing through. Most of the Dales does, but for such a small place Keld gets unusually busy.

Hope this gives you food for thought!

Ian

P.S. if you’re set on one of your three original suggestions, I’d definitely go Grassington, but I’m unsure of what cottages are available.

From Pickering to York you would have to drive to Malton first for the train. Better by far to take the hourly Yorkshire Coastliner bus-https://passenger-line-assets.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/transdevblazefield/YCD/840-timetable-20230709-74369b23.pdf

for £2 each, each way

PS- Re Settle/Skipton I agree with Ian that I would stay "up dale" rather than either town. I am split on the question of Skipton vs Settle if the choice is one of them.
Settle is the smaller of the two and has more character to my own personal taste.
But Skipton is the larger with more facilities, the canal, the castle, the market. And far more transport links. And I love Skipton too, just love Settle that bit more.

I can't give a clear choice. Pros and cons. Depends on your travel plans.

Stuart -

I’m currently swayed by Skipton because a) I managed to successfully (key word) buy Julie a Christmas present there and b) I bought a new ‘flat ‘at’ in the market for six quid. Bargain!

I would concede that Settle is much better in terms of access to the Settle to Carlisle line and for those taking to the hills on foot.

Ian