Yorkshire family holidays and breaks

The Yorkshire Coast with Kids

• Be delighted by Whitby, a historic port with an award-winning sandy beach. Eating fish and chips on its seafront (Rick Stein named the Magpie Café than Britain’s best ‘chippie’) and buying a stick of rock is a must, but there’s more in store – this is the place from which Captain Cook set forth, on locally built ships. The town also features prominently in Dracula, and there are many sites  fans can seek out, including the Bram Stoker Memorial Seat, with views that inspired the author, and  ruined Whitby Abbey, with an interactive visitor centre where you can ‘meet’ Stoker. You might be lucky and find ammonite fossils on the shore; other fossils found locally include whole pterodactyl skeletons.

• Seek out this coastline's other long sandy beaches, pretty bays and historic fishing villages. Near Whitby, Robin Hood’s Bay almost certainly doesn’t have links with the do-gooder – it’s an old smuggling town with tiny labyrinthine streets full of sweet shops, tea-rooms and more. Its beaches are another good source of fossils, or you can dabble in rock-pools.

• Enjoy the traditional resort of Filey with its award-winning child-friendly beach with rock-pools and its many food festivals and late-summer kite festival.

• Explore Scarborough, Britain’s first seaside resort (it was a 17th-century spa town), now a favourite amongst those looking for  surfing action. Trendy shops and restaurants are popping up, as well as a marina. Sights range from the town’s ruined medieval castle perched on its headland to the Rotunda Museum, with an exhibition on the creatures who roamed this ‘Dinosaur Coast’ millions of years ago.

The North York Moors with Kids

• Explore this undulating Jurassic moorland in the north-east of the county aboard the North York Moors Steam Railway, which travels from Pickering (home to a Go Ape! treetop adventure course, in the Dalby Forest) to Whitby.

• Don't miss other North Moors attractions including the More the Eden Camp Modern History Theme Museum in a former POW camp, with an Old Time Music Hall with sing-a-longs and puppetry, and the glorious 18th-century stately home of Castle Howard and Gardens, where Brideshead Revisited was filmed. As well as its magnificent parkland with statues, fountains and temples, it has an adventure playground, trails, boating on one of its lakes and a farm and seasonal pop-up chocolate and cake shop. Nearby Flamingo Land resort receives poor reviews.

Herriot Country with Kids

• Travel west of the Moors to this very rural spot, so-called because country vet James Herriot, hero of All Creatures Great and Small, lived here. The main attraction in the area is the World of James Herriot, with themed rooms, an interactive vets’ surgery and farm, kids’ activities and a mock-up TV studio.

• Take animal-mad kids to the Big Sheep & Little Cow Farm Attraction, to feed calves and lambs, cuddle goats, brush the pig and buy home-made ice-cream.

• Look out too for the White Horse of Kilburn, a hill figure that was carved into the landscape in 1857.

Yorkshire Dales with Kids

• Come to this spectacular area full of dramatic valleys, crags, peaks, caves and moors for walking, cycling and horse riding, plus inviting market towns selling fine local produce and crafts. Among the highlights here is the Embsay & Bolton Abbey Steam Railway,  

• Spend a day at the Lightwater Valley Family Adventure Park, with rides and attractions for younger kids.

• Explore White Scar Cave, Britain’s longest show cave, with guided tours of its stalactites, underground streams and waterfalls.

• Discover the nearby Ingleton waterfalls walk.

• Just outside the Yorkshire Dales National Park, enjoy sedate Harrogate, famous for its Turkish baths but with also with vast Valley Gardens including an adventure playground, summer paddling pool, skate park and crazy golf, and with the RHS Garden Harlow Carr with its treehouse-themed 'Log Ness Monster', wooden climbing structures and woodland trail.

York with Kids

• Wander the county capital's pedestrianised cobbled streets, soaking up lashings of history alongside modern shops and restaurants. There’s enough here to keep you going for a week, including the free-to-enter National Railway Museum with three massive halls full of trains (among them a Japanese bullet train) and interactive exhibits. If it’s planes they like, head for the Yorkshire Air Museum.

• Make for the JORVIK Viking Centre, where state-of-the-art tech brings that era to life, and its sister attraction DIG, where you can experience the techniques used by the archaeologists who discovered the city of Jórvîk by taking part in a dig of your own, with trowels.

• Tour the York Castle Museum, best known for its mock-up Victorian street, including a school room and a sweet shop, with sound-and-light effects. For a schlockier take on the past, there’s The York Dungeon. Or take an evening Ghost Hunt of York, led by a top-hatted Victorian guide – children are encouraged to come to the front.

Leeds with Kids

• Explore this thoroughly modern city redeveloped without losing sight of its Victorian heritage. Its Royal Armouries, home to the national collection of arms and armour, hosts live Samurai demonstrations, reenactments, jousting tournaments and the like.

• Be charmed by Harewood House with its woodland walks and adventure playground.

• Visit the Thackray Museum of Medicine, which includes a Victorian operating theatre, a ‘having a baby’ experience with an ‘empathy belly’ to try on, and a Life Zone where you can find out about the workings of the human body.

Bradford with Kids

• Spend time at the free-to-enter National Science and Media Museum, which includes a giant IMAX cinema and The Magic Factory, where you can play with light, lenses and colour.

• Use Bradford as the gateway, for older kids with a literary interest, to ‘Brontë Country: in quaint Howarth you can visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum, the preserved home of the literary family.

• With younger kids, appreciate the spectacular countryside here from the Keighley & Worth Valley Steam Railway.

Pennine Yorkshire and Peak District National Park with Kids

• Discover this area rich in farm shops, farm-churned ice cream, gourmet restaurants and home cooking, micro-breweries and food festivals.

• Head for Halifax for Eureka! The Museum for Children, with six galleries of hands-on play, sensory discovery and roleplay.

• Explore the  Yorkshire section of the Peak District National Park, with awesome scenery that varies widely, from caves to wildflower-strewn meadows and heather moorland. This is another great spot for walking, horse riding, caving and climbing.  

South Yorkshire with Kids

• Spend time discovering this gateway to the Peak District, also good for outdoor activities. Don't miss the award-winning Rother Valley Country Park with its water-sports centre and mountain-bike hire

• Walk, cycle or horse-ride the coast-to-coast Trans-Pennine Trail, or part of it. Made up of canal towpaths, disused railway paths, cross-country tracks, bridleways, cycle lanes and minor roads, much of it is traffic free and perfect with young kids.

East Yorkshire and the Yorkshire Wolds with Kids

• Visit the National Coal Mining Museum in Wakefield, the highpoint of which is a trip 140m down one of the country’s oldest working mines.

• Experience one of the slightly bonkers Diggerland theme-parks, at Castleford, where you ride in and/or drive various kinds of construction machinery, including giant diggers and dumper trucks

• Wander around the Hepworth Wakefield contemporary art gallery and also the nearby Yorkshire Sculpture Park, where compelling alfresco art stands in acres of lovely grounds to run wild in.

ª Discover waterfront Hull with its lively Museum Quarter. Venues include the Hull & East Riding Museum of Archaeology and the Streetlife Museum of Transport. But its most popular attraction is The Deep aquarium.

• Check out this area's combination of gorgeous countryside and coastline. Don't miss clifftop Sewerby Hall & Gardens overlooking Bridlington Bay, with pleasure gardens and walled gardens, a land train, an adventure playground and a pitch and putt golf course.