Goathland and the Yorkshire Moors

When asking people at the University about 'must do' day trips from York, a trip to Goathland - a tiny village in the middle of North York Moors National Park - was the reply. One of my students had spent a day hiking through the moors and also said we should make the trip.  We had ridden through the moors on our trip to Whitby, but only seen them through the bus window. Though the day was cold and damp I talked John into making the trip on Saturday. (Sunday was supposed to be a much nicer day, but the bus we needed to take to get to Pickering - sort of the gateway city to the moors - didn't run on Sundays. A day during the week wouldn't work because the old steam train from Pickering to Goathland only runs on weekends in November.) 

The highlight of the train ride through the moors from Pickering to Goathland was all the pheasant (pheasants? what is the correct plural form??) we saw.  John and I both agree we saw more on this one trip than we had seen in our whole life.  Flocks of them! You can't see them in these pictures, but they were there.

 

On arrival in Goathland, we found a picturesque little village with more sheep than buildings:

Part of the attraction of Goathland for the locals is that it is used as the setting for a TV show called Heartbeat! in which it is called Aidensfield. Several of the buildings carry Aidensfield rather than Goathland signs.

There really wasn't much to do or see here. And there were sheep wandering around all over the town...which of course means sheep poo all over as well.

The moors do have a certain stark beauty to them, and if the heather was in bloom and the day was not so bone-chilling, I'm sure a hike through them would be quite nice. We opted for a Yorkshire cream tea instead of a hike through the moors.  (A cream team is not tea with cream; it is a pot of tea with a scone, strawberry jam and clotted cream. Perfect for this afternoon. The town's tea room is the building behind the sheep, above.)

Goathland's other claim to fame is that their train station was used as the Hogsmeade railway station in the Harry Potter films.

And...the train on which we rode was used in the films as the Hogwarts Express - a real steam engine!

The trip back home in the dark was not particularly pleasant (two bus transfers in towns that did not have indoor stations or nearby cafes or pubs in which to wait). Though I would not describe this as one of our better trips (I guess not every excursion can be exceptional), as John summarized the trip: "It was better than sitting in our flat all day."

Good-bye to Goathland! (This one's for you, Marg.)