Yorkshire Tourist Guide - Articles

The emblem of Yorkshire is the White Rose of the House of York. An annual Yorkshire Day celebration has been held every 1 August since 1975. Amongst the celebrations there is a Civic gathering of Lord Mayors, Mayors and other Civic Heads from across the county and convened by the Yorkshire Society, in 2004 it was held in Leeds and in 2005 it was held in Bradford. The people of Penistone will be hosting the Civic gathering in 2006. There is also an "anthem" for the county in the form of the folk song "On Ilkla Moor Baht'at" (on Ilkley Moor without a hat).



Journalist and broadcaster Sir Bernard Ingham recently wrote a book Yorkshire Greats: The County's Fifty Finest, in which he proposed a list of the greatest ever Yorkshiremen and women. The list included the likes of James Cook, William Wilberforce and George Cayley.



"Tyke" is now a colloquialism for the Yorkshire dialect as well as the term some Yorkshiremen affectionately use to describe themselves, especially in the West Riding. "Tyke" was originally a term of abuse given by Yorkshire people to Londoners, because they thought their speech made them sound like yapping mongrel dogs (tykes). Londoners turned this around and used the term to describe Yorkshire folk

Take one of the world's classic rail journeys on the Leeds-Settle-Carlisle Railway. Change from the North Yorkshire Moors Railway (left) onto the lovely Esk Valley Line. Look out for the special family fun days at Embsay Steam Railway or steam up into Bronte Country on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway, setting of 'The Railway Children'.

Relive some nostalgia at Hull's Streetlife, the Yorkshire Carriage Museum at Aysgarth, and Automobilia in Hebden Bridge plus wartime memories at the Yorkshire Air Museum and Allied Air Forces Memorial near York and Beverley's Museum of Army Transport.

The highest point in traditional Yorkshire is Mickle Fell at 788 m (2585 ft). It is bordered by County Durham (along the River Tees), Lincolnshire (along the Humber), Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Lancashire (along the Pennines), Westmorland and the North Sea and is traditionally divided into West, North and East Ridings (from Old Norse þriðing, "third part", a legacy of the area's ninth century Scandinavian settlers). Each of the ridings was then further subdivided into smaller units called Wapentakes, which were administered by an early experiment with democratic representation termed a "Thing". The county town, York, is not part of any riding, as it is a separate entity known as the city of York. Yorkshire is often referred to as God's County by Tykes (Yorkshiremen).

The bulk of historic county of Yorkshire now forms the ceremonial counties of North Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire and East Riding, with small parts in the Teesdale district of County Durham, the South Lakeland district of Cumbria, the Ribble Valley and Pendle districts of Lancashire, and the boroughs of Oldham and Tameside in Greater Manchester. The four current ceremonial counties, together with a small part of Lincolnshire, form the Government Office Region of Yorkshire and the Humber. Excluded from this region is the former-Cleveland area of North Yorkshire which is part of the North East Region.