North York Moors National Park

The moors are a broad sandstone plateau cut by dales, and in the last two weeks of August the heather turns them solid purple, which is the reason most people time a visit. The rest of the year the colour is brown and green and the appeal is space: long empty roads, ancient stone crosses used as waymarks, and villages like Hutton-le-Hole and Goathland tucked into the valleys. The coast is the other half of the park. Cliffs run from Staithes to Ravenscar with Whitby in the middle, its ruined abbey on the headland above a working harbour, and Robin Hood's Bay dropping down a single steep street to a beach where the shale gives up ammonites after storms. The North Yorkshire Moors Railway runs steam through the middle of it.

What you actually see

• Heather moorland in bloom - solid purple across the tops in late August.
• Whitby Abbey - the ruined headland church above the harbour.
• Robin Hood's Bay - a village of alleys falling to a fossil beach.
• North Yorkshire Moors Railway - steam trains through Newtondale.

When to go

Late August for the heather, which lasts roughly three weeks and is weather-dependent. May and June are better for the coast and much quieter inland. Whitby fills on summer weekends and during its goth weekends in spring and autumn. Winter brings road closures on the tops whenever snow drifts across them.

Honest expectations

The heather window is short and often misjudged - arrive a fortnight early and the moors are simply brown. Whitby in August is very crowded and parking is a struggle. Coastal paths run close to unstable cliff edges that lose material regularly. Public transport is thin once you leave the main valleys.

Nearby

York lies an hour south, and the Yorkshire Dales sit across the Vale of York to the west.