Hawes in Wensleydale is the ideal base for exploring the delights of James Herriot's Yorkshire and the Dales National Park.
The countryside can be enjoyed on foot, on horseback, (there are pony trekking stables nearby) or by car. There is much to see, the rugged limestone scenery with its unusual features such as the 'Buttertubs', deep and strangely shaped holes close to the road to Swaledale through Buttertubs Pass, north of Hawes. Other features well worth seeing are Wensleydale's waterfalls. A couple of miles away on the other side of the dale is the highest unbroken waterfall in Britain, Hardrow Force, 100 feet high. Further down the dale are Aysgarth Falls, three of them, Upper, Middle and Lower. A few miles from Hawes is Semerwater, a lake formed by glacial action from which flows the shortest English river, the river Bain.