Title: AA Leisure Guides: Yorkshire Dales
Author: Mike Gerrard
ISBN: 9780749550233, AA Publishing, 2008
Genre: Travel
Rating: A
First Line: With a huge National Park at its core, the Yorkshire Dales is a region of exquisite beauty, and a surprising amount of variety.
A drive through the Yorkshire Dales on the way to Glasgow, Scotland, was one of the highlights of our last trip to the UK. The Dales are beautiful, and I'm planning to explore them more on our next trip, which is the reason why I bought this guide.
The first thing I noticed is that it's spiral-bound, and that makes it much more useful as a tool when you're traveling. The next thing I noticed was the beautiful photography, but in this day and age it would be rather silly to publish a travel guide with rubbish photos! It wasn't until I actually began reading it that I became fascinated.
This book is filled with villages to visit, walks to take, routes for bicycle tours and for driving in a car. Enough local history is given to whet your appetite, the market towns are listed as well as the days of the week the markets are open for business. And after all that walking and bicycling, all the best pubs are listed as well.
Besides the information about shops and pubs, I loved pouring over the maps of the walks that are available in each area. Distances, how many stiles you have to cross, slippery places where you need to be careful, car parks, approximate times that it will take to complete each walk...it's all there in a very readable style.
I have to admit that my copy is now littered with bright orange Post-It flags, and I'll be using this information when making plans for our next journey across the pond. If you're planning on traveling through the Yorkshire Dales, this book is an excellent resource.
