The day we left the Yorkshire Dales we decided to take the scenic route through the North York Moors National Park. Oh how I loved it here! The weather was inclement with heavy rain and mist so visibility wasn’t great but I really felt that this added to the allure and mystique of the place. It was like we had stepped straight out of Wuthering Heights. I was expecting Heathcliff to walk across the moors at any minute.

We stopped at a hotel called Mallyan Spout to have a look. Mallyan Spout is a beautiful country house hotel sitting in the middle of the misty moors. The hotel is in the village of Goathland which has a few claims to fame. Firstly it has sheep wandering right through it. Secondly it was the filming location of Heartbeat, a popular TV show set in 1960s Yorkshire which was staple Sunday evening viewing in the 1990s. No children are allowed in the hotel so we weren’t able to stop here, but we couldn’t resist a quick walk out on the moors in front of the hotel. Even in the mist the colours were wonderful.

The village of Goathland itself is lovely, with the aforementioned sheep everywhere you look and a small street of nostalgic shops with an excellent tea room. I couldn’t resist a wander through these shops and a moorland slice from the Goathland Tea Room.

Another claim to fame of Goathland is its little train station which is part of the North Yorkshire Moors Railway heritage line with working steam trains. This historic station has served as Hogsmeade station in the Harry Potter films as well as many other films and TV shows where a steam train or an old-fashioned train station is required.

We had a quick bite to eat in the station tea room before boarding our train. The kids were so excited to ride on a train, we forgot how much of a treat this was for them given that train travel in Brisbane is rare. In fact I don’t think they’ve ever been on a train in Australia!

You can buy a platform ticket for £1 to watch the trains from the platform, but we went one better and took a little ride to the next station – Grosmont – and back. The train ride to Grosmont was on a diesel train and took about 20 minutes. At Grosmont we got off the train, had a look in the station shop and waited on the platform for the steam train that would take us back to Goathland. We watched the train pulling in and the steam engine being latched onto the carriages ready for the return journey. Well this was very exciting. It’s not every day you get to see a working steam train, let alone ride in one. We all let out a few squeals when the steam train made it’s signature “choo choo” noise on the journey back. Although one thing I will say for diesel trains over steam engines – diesels are a lot less smelly!

You can catch the North Yorkshire Moors steam train all the way to Whitby on the coast if you have more time. Whitby is famous for its abbey ruins which inspired Dracula and its fish and chips. It would make a for a nice day out on the train. We didn’t have the time for that today so the quick one stop was all we could manage.

The weather was really coming in by this point. We had planned to stop at the Hole of Horcrum to do a walk out onto the moor, but the rain was coming down and we had zero visibility so instead we ate our moorland slice in the car and made a beeline for our next destination – York.

Yorkshire might be edging out Northumberland as my favourite county we’d visited this trip, and we hadn’t even got to York yet!

Coming up…the city of York.

Previously…cheese and cows in the Yorkshire Dales.