What’s your ideal British weekend break? Sand castles and fishing boats tied to a cobbled quayside, or purple heather and pub lunches on a yomp across the untamed uplands? No need to choose – the North York Moors National Park offers a two-for-one deal. From Captain Cook to curd tarts, from dinosaurs to Dracula, there is plenty to sink your teeth into. We asked six notable locals to nominate their favourite haunts.

Full-size illustration of the area

IAN CARMICHAEL

At 87, the veteran actor, best known as Bertie Wooster and Lord Peter Wimsey, still lives in his native county

“I’ve lived at Grosmont, deep in the moors, for 30 years. The village is on the North Yorkshire Moors vintage railway line, and the engines chuffing in from Pickering are unspeakably picturesque, especially on a steam weekend. Everybody affects period costume: it’s like living on a movie set. I love Whitby, the cobbles and the nostalgia, but our weekends by the sea have always been at Sandsend, a mile up the coast. The bay is dynamically beautiful and the beach is blissfully undeveloped: our children, grandchildren and now great-grandchildren have all knocked out sand castles there.

“We’ve just discovered a splendid restaurant-with-rooms in Sandsend, Estbek House. It’s a Georgian place done up in the modern style – but intimate, and with really careful cooking. My lobster and brown shrimp ravioli was sensational; or you can have a big slab of halibut with sauvignon blanc cream. Apparently, the bedrooms are nice, too. We came out to find ducks dabbling on the beck and a crescent moon reflecting in the bay: very glamorous, rather like Turkey, my wife said. Which you don’t say too often in North Yorkshire...”

Details: a Day Rover ticket on the North Yorkshire Moors Railway (01751 472508, www.nymr.co.uk ) costs £14 (children £7). Estbek House (01947 893424, www.estbekhouse.co.uk ) has B&B doubles from £110; lobster ravioli starter £8.25.

GP TAYLOR

The former punk promoter and parish priest has made his fortune writing supernatural thrillers for teenagers, famously Shadowmancer

“When I was growing up in Scarborough, my garden backed onto the disused railway track to Whitby, and I’d jump on my moped and ride along the clifftops, feeling like Steve McQueen. Now, I take my daughters, and it makes the best cycle ride ever. It’s where the moors crash into the sea, and the old train journey must have been spectacular – coursing right along the 600ft cliffs at Ravenscar towards Boggle Hole, where there’s a youth hostel down in the cove, run by an amazing woman named Peta, who’s also the coastguard. I set the chase scenes in Shadowmancer along those cliffs, because they feel so full of mystery.

“When we’re cycling, we’ll head for Whitby Abbey, with its Dracula connections, or stop on the way at the Ravenscar visitor centre, where you can scramble down and examine dinosaur footprints in the rocky foreshore; it’s pretty spine-tingling to think of those creatures walking there, a million years ago. The best way to finish is back home in Scalby, at the Yew Tree Cafe, which looks for all the world like a village caff but does the best steak and chips you’ll ever taste. I eat at the Ivy in London a lot and, in my opinion, the food at the Yew Tree is comparable. What a day out!”

Details: Ravenscar Coastal Centre (01723 870423, www.nationaltrust.org.uk ) is open until September 30, 10.30am-5pm. Boggle Hole hostel (0870 770 5704, www.yha.org.uk ) has beds from £14 (children £10). The Yew Tree Cafe is on 01723 367989.

ALAN HINKES

He is the first British mountaineer to conquer all 14 peaks over 8,000 metres – despite injuring his back on Nanga Parbat, when he sneezed on the flour from a chapati

“I’m a great champion for my home town, Northallerton. It’s not as fairy-tale as Richmond, maybe, but it has a classic Yorkshire high street and the best food shop in Britain: Lewis & Cooper. They do their own coffee blend, which you’ll smell roasting as you walk in, and sell proper dry-cured bacon, gourmet cheeses, organic chocolate... and they have a superb olive selection. Pick up your picnic, and eat it on the summit of Roseberry Topping. That’s the hill that inspired me to be a mountaineer. A sheer cliff falls away on one side, giving it a strange, hook-nosed silhouette; they call it the Yorkshire Matterhorn.

“You can reach the top in an hour from Great Ayton village, where Captain Cook went to school, and the reward is vast views across the moors to Whitby and the sea, with Cook’s Monument in the foreground. It’s a popular summit, though, so I suggest setting off at twilight on a moonlit evening. Magical. Sometimes people stop me up there and say, ‘Aren’t you that bloke who climbed Everest?’ I say, ‘No, I prefer it up here, mate.’ ”

Details: Lewis & Cooper is at 92 High Street (www.lewisandcooper.co.uk ). For the Roseberry Topping walk, you need OS Explorer map OL26.

SALLY ROBINSON

In 1999, this farmer’s wife decided to diversify – with a double D: she set up the internet bra company Amplebosom.com

“The view from my window is the finest in Yorkshire: we’re above Rievaulx Abbey and Ryedale – it’s glorious. The drive to Rievaulx and Helmsley from the national park centre at Sutton Bank is sensational – but the trick is to swing off the A170 and come through Old Byland. I’d start at Kilburn, which has the ‘Mousey’ Thompson furniture workshop – his trademark is a little mouse carved on every table and chair. Sweet, but not cheap. Rievaulx Abbey is a nice place to pause: a ruin surrounded by rambling woods.

“But the biggest treat is at the end, in Helmsley, where the Castlegate Bakery makes the best Yorkshire curd tart in the county. Their steak pies are fabulous too, oozing with gravy – how do they manage that? Eat them hot in the tearoom and take the date-and-walnut cake home. Oh, dear. I’m supposed to be on a diet.”

Details: the Mouseman Visitor Centre (01347 869102, www.robertthompsons.co.uk ). Rievaulx Abbey, 10am- 6pm; £4.50 adults, £2.30 children (www.english-heritage.org.uk ).

MARTIN CARTHY

The godfather of English traditional music and head of the Waterson-Carthy folk dynasty lives at Robin Hood’s Bay

“What I love about the moors is the sledgehammer contrast between the endless, vacant plateaux – heather and gorse for miles and miles – and the intimate dales that pierce them. Suddenly, you come across these neat green scoops down through the purple stuff, with maybe a few cottages, some woods and a stream.

“The loveliest example is a tucked-away spot called Littlebeck, at the bottom of a deadend lane south of Sleights. The valley is so steep that when we first moved here in 1975, they didn’t even have telly; and we were invited to play a concert at the village hall – as a welcome, really. The locals turned up with their instruments and played along. It was organic and wonderful. It felt like time-travelling. You can drive from Littlebeck to a ‘secret’ waterfall called Falling Foss, where there’s an old bridge, and bluebells in spring. You have to pinch yourself to believe it’s real. We even thought of buying a farmhouse nearby, but it had a combine harvester parked in the sitting room. It’s that kind of area...”

Details: Falling Foss is part of Sneaton Forest (01751 472771, www.forestry.gov.uk ).

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