All Creatures Great and Small Yorkshire Dales Tour
Darrowby, Skeldale House and the Drovers Arms, in the landscape that made them.
The Dales, As You Have Seen Them On Screen
The Yorkshire Dales are the reason All Creatures Great and Small looks the way it does. The dry stone walls, the limestone scars, the villages that have barely changed in a century.
This is a guided tour of the places the series was filmed, driven and led by somebody who grew up here.
You are collected from your hotel or the airport, driven in a comfortable car, and taken round the locations by a guide who knows the ground, the history and the places the tour buses do not stop.
Half day or full day. Tailored to what you want to see.
Where We Go
Grassington
Darrowby itself.
Grassington's cobbled market square stands in for Darrowby and appears in almost every episode. The production dresses the square with 1930s signage, period vehicles and window displays, and local residents appear on screen as extras.
Part of why it works is what the production did not have to change. There are no modern houses in the town centre, so the crew only needed to alter shop signs and remove aerials, satellite dishes and alarm boxes.
You will recognise a good deal of it on foot.
The Devonshire Arms is the exterior of the Drovers Arms. Inside there is a corner given over to photographs from the filming, and the pub serves Timothy Taylor's Golden Best under the name Drovers Best.
The Stripey Badger appears as G F Endleby's grocers.
Skeldale House faces the main square. It is a private home and we look at it from the street.
The square also provides Handleys Booksellers, Darrowby Hardware, the cycle shop and J A Dean, Drapers and Hosiery.
Appletreewick and the Craven Arms
The Drovers Arms, later.
For the later series, the interior of the Drovers Arms moved to the Craven Arms at Appletreewick, a sixteenth century inn with exposed oak beams and open fires. It is where Tristan discovers quite how large his bar tab has grown in the Christmas special.
The pub takes its name from Sir William Craven, who was born in a cottage in the village around 1548. At thirteen or fourteen he was sent to London on the common carrier and apprenticed to a merchant tailor in Watling Street.
He rose to become Sheriff, then Lord Mayor of London in 1610, and is still known locally as Appletreewick's own Dick Whittington. He restored High Hall at the top of the village street, now Grade II* listed, almost opposite the cottage where he was born.
His son founded the Craven scholarships at Oxford and Cambridge, which are still awarded today.
Arncliffe
The other half of Darrowby.
Arncliffe sits in Littondale, a quiet side valley off Wharfedale, and it has been used repeatedly across the series.
The rear yard of Skeldale House is here, not in Grassington. It is where the cars are kept on screen.
The village green hosted the Darrowby Show in series one, and it is the bus stop where James meets his parents arriving from Glasgow.
The Falcon Inn is one of the very few locations that kept its own name and signage on screen.
The Church of St Oswald provided the exterior of the wedding church. It stands on the River Skirfare beneath the limestone crags of Littondale. The tower dates from the fifteenth century and holds three bells, with parts of the building older still and much of what you see the result of eighteenth and nineteenth century restoration.
One for older viewers. The Falcon Inn was the original Woolpack in Emmerdale Farm, from 1972 to 1976, before the production moved elsewhere. People travel a long way to stand in it.
Littondale
The scenery the series is built on.
Littondale is a tributary valley running off Wharfedale, carved by the River Skirfare and enclosed by limestone scars. It is quieter than the main dale and considerably less visited.
A great deal of the outdoor work in the series is shot in country like this. The walls, the barns, the pasture and the light are the reason the programme looks the way it does, and no single building on the tour will tell you as much about the world of the books as an hour in this valley.
Hubberholme
The church interior.
While the exterior wedding scenes were shot at Arncliffe, the interior was filmed at St Michael and All Angels in Hubberholme, at the head of Wharfedale.
Using two churches let the production keep both the setting and the interior authentic.
The church is also where the author J B Priestley's ashes are buried, and it contains a rood loft dating from 1558, one of only two surviving in Yorkshire.
Hardraw and the Green Dragon Inn
The inside of the Drovers Arms.
The interior of the Drovers Arms in the earlier series was filmed at the Green Dragon Inn at Hardraw, in upper Wensleydale, a considerable drive from Grassington.
The production designer chose it because almost nothing had been done to it. Original flagstone floors, the original fireplace, original oak panelling on the walls, old oak settles and copper-topped tables. Parts of the building date to the thirteenth century.
Behind the inn is Hardraw Force, England's highest unbroken single-drop waterfall above ground, reached through the pub's own grounds.
Ribblehead Viaduct
The Dales at their most dramatic.
Twenty-four arches carrying the Settle to Carlisle railway across Batty Moss, with Whernside and Ingleborough on either side.
Built between 1870 and 1874, it is the defining structure of the western Dales and one of the most photographed places in the north of England.
And The Places Not On The List
Part of the point of a local guide is the locations that are not in the guidebooks. Farmhouses, lanes, gates and viewpoints used in the series that no signposted trail will take you to, and that you would drive straight past.
We will show you those too.
The Practical Detail
Half day, four hours. Grassington, Appletreewick, Arncliffe and Littondale, with time in the villages rather than a race between them.
Full day, eight hours. The above plus Hubberholme, Hardraw and the Green Dragon, Ribblehead Viaduct, and the secret locations.
Transport. A large, comfortable car throughout. You are not driving, not parking and not navigating single-track lanes.
Collection. From your hotel, your accommodation or the airport. Airport collection and drop-off available on request.
Tailored. Tell us what you want to see and we will build the day round it. If there is a particular scene, building or view that matters to you, say so when you enquire.
Your guide. Ryan, founder of Hike Yorkshire, who grew up in this landscape and knows it in every season. Six years in the Royal Marines before founding the company.
Pricing
Half day from £49 per person.
Full day from £99 per person.
Airport collection and drop-off available on request.
Tell us your dates, your group size and where you are staying, and we will come back with a price.