Historic Hawes: your 60-second guide
Where is Hawes?
The old market town of Hawes is set in the heart of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, surrounded by a wilder landscape of moorland and hills.
What is there to see in Hawes?
Start your exploration of Hawes at the Dales Countryside Museum in the former Victorian railway building. The Life and Spirit galleries echo the landscape you’ll just have travelled through - one of stone, wood, metal and earth. Discover how the Dales people utilised the land around them from the early Stone Age hunters and Bronze Age farmers through to recent times. The charming railway carriages takes you on a tour through the Dales communities, its religious institutions, leisure and transport facilities.
From the museum head up the cobbled Pennine Way with its honey-toned terraced houses, crossing the bridge over Gayle Beck, where water tumbles over limestone slabs below the riverside cottages. The street takes you past antique and gift shops out into Market Place. Here there are plenty more individual shops and cafés to while away an hour or four: cafés, craft shops, boutiques, outdoor and country leisure wear. Linger at the cosy White Hart Inn for lunch.
Wensleydale famous cheese
For the afternoon, head to the Wensleydale Creamery Visitor Centre. Who can forget the loveable but gormless Wallace with his penchant for Wensleydale cheese? ('More cheese, Gromit?' he asks of his altogether shrewder dog.)
The interactive museum takes you through a thousand years of cheesemaking in the Dales. See how the cheese is made from the viewing platform, sample the Wensleydale varieties and Yorkshire cheddars and stock up on your favourites before returning to Market Place.
Enjoy an evening meal in the cosy courtyard of Cockett’s Hotel and simply climb the stairs to one of the tastefully decorated ensuite rooms.
