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Lakeland and the North

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The touring notes for this region will take you from York in the south, across the North
York Moors, through the Borders Country to Scotland, back to the landscape glories of the
Lake District and finally south to Chester.

Northumbria was the birthplace of English Christianity and the northernmost limit of Roman
occupation. Along the coast the road leads to the haunts of Grace Darling, St Cuthbert the bishop
of Lindisfarne, Hadrian and the brutal forces that fought and died on the battlefields of Flodden.

On the broad sweep of the coastline here marauding Vikings and people of the Low Countries
made their earliest landings, not always to the great joy of the locals.

Between York and Durham the suggested route is across the North York Moors National Park,
where you will cross one of the largest expanses of heather moorland in the world.

In the park’s woodlands, oak, ash, birch and rowan thrive, while shrubs such as hazel and
hawthorn provide the understorey. Alder often grows in the damper ground along rivers and
streams. It’s an area where you can go back to back to nature and enjoy the journey.

You will also get to explore

Rievaulx Abbey, one of the most complete, and atmospheric, of England’s abbey ruins.

Castle Howard is an18th century stately residence, set in 1,000 landscaped acres just outside
York.

For more on the things to see and do on the road between York and Durham click here . . .

In AD122 Emperor Hadrian arrived in Britain and decreed that his legions should build a wall twixt
them and the barbarians to the north.

Perhaps it was because the “barbarians” had a wee bit of an issue with a foreign occupying
army. Either way, they constantly harried and fell upon the Roman encampments with serious
intent. Despite that, the occupiers fashioned an early version of the Berlin Wall with forts, mile
castles and turrets that stretched from one coast to the other.

Hadrian’s Wall was manned by 13,000 troops during a 250 year period, but by AD400 the last of
the garrisons gave it away and left us an enduring monument to this period in British history.

For more on the things to see and do on the road to Hadrian’s Wall click here . . .

Further to the north, on the road from Durham to Edinburgh, lies the land of the first British
Christians, at Lindisfarne is Holy Island, now part of the Lindisfarne National Nature Reserve.