Yorkshire, Lake District: May 30 Bank Holiday and other questions
 

I jumped on award tickets today and we have good flights in and out of Manchester, from the US. The dates are May 22 to June 5, taking in the bank holiday.

This is a little earlier in the summer than I had planned, but these were the best tickets available with the fewest connections, best times, etc.

I hope the weather in late May is OK.

My first questions:

1. We are thinking of going straight to Liverpool from Manchester Airport. There seems to be a good train schedule. Is this a good idea?

2. We would then rent a car and get to the Lake District by Wednesday, midweek, as it has been suggested we avoid the weekend there. Anyone have a Lake District spot they recommend?

3. From there we are heading into Yorkshire. I don't know what areas to avoid for the bank holiday. Any ideas?

This seems like more than enough to start with...

1. Yes

2. You will be travelling before the half term holidays so things won't be as bad, I'd just base myself in Keswick and travel around from there. For a bit of peace and quiet head west to Buttermere.

3. Main problem with the Dales is the lack of roads - and the narrowness of them. Avoid areas like Bolton Abbey, Grassington, the road up through the Dales from Threshfield, the Malham area and Hawes. As an alternative go up into Teesdale and or Weardale. - in Barnard Castle there's the wonderful Bowes Museum.

alanRow, thank you very much.

I checked before posting last night and both the Lady Lever and the Walker Art Gallery are open daily, so being in Liverpool on a Monday won't be a problem. However, I'm wondering if we ought to stay two nights.

Recover and visit one museum on Monday, then stay over and visit another museum and explore on Tuesday. Off to the Lakes on Wednesday.

Can anyone comment on Liverpool for a two night stay? It certainly seems full of museums...

Stayed in liverpool for 2 nights this year....great city, we didn't see everything, but were very relaxed.
We stayed here http://liverpoolcitycentreapartment.co.uk/

alihutch, that is a great looking apartment. Seems a little above what I was hoping to budget, but maybe...

We are now trying to figure how long to stay in the Lake District to avoid the Bank Holiday crowds.

Im looking at this itinerary so far:

May 23.... arrive Liverpool
May 24......Liverpool
May 25......drive to Lakes
May 26.....Lakes
May 27....Lakes
May 28 is Saturday... Don't know quite where to head. Yorkshire Dales was the original destination, but will we be squashed with the Bank Holiday crowd?

We have until the morning of June 5 to get to Manchester Aiport.

I was thinking of
Yorkshire Dales
Yorkshire coast (Whitby)
York

I would love comments; thanks.

Good idea to visit the Lakes in May - they shouldn't be very busy at that time of year, even at weekends. There are so many great hikes in the area, you will soon be away from roads and into stunning countryside. Get a detailed map and get hiking. Great Rigg is an easy hike and you get amazing views of Windemere from the top. Have a look at: http://www.jeremytaylor.eu/lake_district.htm

How about the Peak District? We were there during the early May bank holiday in 2007. While our hostel was pretty busy, we didn't see hordes of people anywhere.

Lee Ann

<<< How about the Peak District? >>>

It's the 2nd busiest National Park in the world. One quarter of the population of the UK live within 60 minutes drive of it.

"It's the 2nd busiest National Park in the world."

Well, maybe. But it absorbs visitors very differently from most foreign national parks.

For example Yosemite, for all its size, can feel crowded because its eating and accommodation, and its major footpaths, are concentrated in a tiny space: getting away from them requires genuinely strenuous walking to very remote areas that many might understandably feel leery about. There's no real public transport into the park, so visitors all drive their own cars.

British national parks have far, far more development: they got designated National Parks after centuries of pub, cottage, hotel and church building - with the inevitable thousands of miles of footpaths. On a bank holiday weekend, towns inside the Dales park like Bakewell are crowded, and so are man-made attractions in the park like Chatsworth. Finding parking can be difficult. But there's a huge amount of public transport from the nearby cities, and it's easy to walk off along an immense, dense and generally benign footpath network to deserted areas less than a mile away.

Result: even during bank holiday weekends, the Peak District feels almost empty after a gentle-ish ten minute walk from your car park or bus stop. Yosemite, though vaster and mostly emptier (because it was designated a National Park to prevent practically any development, and to destroy much of what had been built previously) feels like a busy suburban shopping parade unless you go off-piste to where the bears hang out.

England's 100% man-made landscape means our National Parks can never be the wildernesses John Muir wanted to recreate in Calfornia. So lots of visitors just don't have the same effect.

Hi
The Yorkshire Dales cover a very large area – and not all the Dales are in the National Park itself. There are tourist hot spots of course, but other areas where you will hardly see a soul. Could you tell us what you want from your trip to the Dales? Are you planning to do some walking? Visiting castles or abbeys? Waterfalls? Villages?