Yorkshire is the largest county in England and the one that most rewards those who take the time to understand it — a landscape of extraordinary variety, from the heather moors of the north to the limestone dales of the west, with a culture that is as distinctive as the landscape.

The North York Moors are the finest moorland landscape in England — a high plateau of heather and bracken, with the fishing villages of the coast below and the market towns of Helmsley and Pickering on its southern edge. Whitby, on the coast, is the most atmospheric town in Yorkshire — a fishing port of extraordinary beauty, with the ruins of a medieval abbey above and the associations of Bram Stoker's Dracula giving it a particular edge.

The Yorkshire Dales are the finest walking landscape in England — a series of limestone valleys, each with its own character and its own rewards. Wharfedale, Wensleydale, Swaledale and Ribblesdale are all beautiful, but it is the high country between them — the Three Peaks, the Howgill Fells, the Pennine Way — that offers the finest walking.

York is the finest medieval city in England — a city of extraordinary completeness, with the Minster, the Shambles, the city walls and the National Railway Museum all within walking distance of each other. The food culture of Yorkshire is built on the produce of the dales: Wensleydale cheese, Yorkshire forced rhubarb, Whitby crab and the Yorkshire pudding that is the defining dish of the county.

Yorkshire rewards those who arrive with time and leave with a deeper understanding of what England looks like when it is at its most itself.