Touring All Creatures Great and Small

Easy train trip from London to York, and there are several companies there that offer All Creatures tours. I recommend Mountain Goat (small bus) tours.

Don't forget to add Thirsk where the real James Herriott was based. It is easily done from York by train.

In the latest All Creatures Great and Small series, Grassington was used for Darrowby. In the original series, they used Askrigg.

Unfortunately the film locations are scattered around the Dales and are not easily done without a car so the advice to do a tour from York is sensible. .

I took the train from York to Thirsk and thoroughly enjoyed The World of James Herriott. If you're fan, it's well worth visiting as a day trip from York.

As the others have noted, all of the locations for the book, and both TV series are spread apart quite a bit, so without a car, it would be difficult to get there on your own. Thirsk (and the James Herriot museum) would be easy to do by train, but getting to places like Grassington would be more difficult.

This thread has some suggestions for tours on it that you might find helpful: https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/england/visit-james-herriot-world-frisk-uk

Reaching York is easy and fast by train (when they aren't on strike). You could take a morning train to York and then take the bus out to Thirsk, visit the museum and town, spend the nite in York, then the next day take one of the tours of All Creatures Great and Small sites. With another nite in York you could take one of the tours of the Moors and countryside that Herriot/Wight loved so much.

The possibility of adding a day/night in York was what I was just typing. I think trying to get up early enough to make the trek to York (punching in a return trip on Lner on a dummy September Thursday has the earliest train at 06:15 arrival at 8:30) in order to make a tour would be tight. The Mountain Goat ACGS tour starts at 9:15 am and runs till 5:30 pm. There’s a train back at 6:30pm that arrives back in London at 8:38. It’s doable, but would be a long day (at least for me)

I don't think I would want to go from London for a day tour from York. The timing of the train gives little room for even the slightest delay, especially as the Mountain Goat leaves from Duncombe Place in York (near the Minster) rather than the bus interchange at York Station.

I agree Stuart. Too much unpredictability. Adding a day and at least an overnight would be my only way of doing this, especially to fully enjoy oneself.

Thank you all. I thought it would have to be a two or three day trip from London. I like the idea or visiting Thrisk also. If you did this during the wk, in September is there a high risk of train strikes? While in Paris, I booked a day trip on a Friday. Strike were usually Fri-Mon I was told. So if I had done Mon-Thur we would have been ok. My husband would really enjoy seeing the shows sites but don't want a lot of stress.
Thank you again

The rail strikes are over for now, there is an ongoing issue over Sunday working but that is it. September 2025 is a year off, but there should be peace for the foreseeable future. They have happened on all sorts of days over the last 2 years.
In any event there will be 14 days notice of any strikes, and LNER at least have a (track- pun intended) record of running a basic level of train service on strike days.

Thank you all.

By the way the new series of All Creatures Great and Small starts in the UK on Channel 5 next Thursday. 19 September.

I doubt that My 5- the Channel 5 catch up will be available in the USA but you never know.

We took the Grand Yorkshire Tours “All Creatures” tour. It is limited to 6 people and we went to many sites related to the books and series. It was easy, fun and beautiful seeing the countryside!