Jonathan Thomas (00:21)
Welcome to the Anglotopia podcast. The podcast for people who love British travel, history and culture. Today I'm speaking with Tim Barber, a Yorkshire Blue Badge guide and the founder of Rio Yorkshire Tours. For over a decade, Tim has been showing visitors the real Yorkshire, not just the tourist highlights, but the hidden gems, the stunning landscapes and the stories that bring this remarkable region to life. Yorkshire is one of those places that Americans will usually fall absolutely in love with, whether it's the dramatic scenery of the Dales,

the Gothic atmosphere of Whitby, the literary heritage of the Brontes, or the filming locations for the PBS masterpiece hit All Creatures Great and Small. Tim knows it all, and he's here to help us understand what makes Yorkshire so special. So I've been to Yorkshire and I loved it, and this summer after I complete my Hadrian's Wall walk, I'm planning to spend a few days in Yorkshire. So I'm hoping Tim can give me some personal recommendations as well. Welcome to the podcast, Tim.

Tim Barber (01:17)
Hi there, good afternoon or good morning as it is over there with you.

Jonathan Thomas (01:22)
Yeah. Yeah, that's six hour time difference. It always trips me up. So I'm going to dive right in my first question. You founded Real Yorkshire Tours back in 2014. What inspired you to become a tour guide and get your business going?

Tim Barber (01:36)
⁓ good question. I actually worked in marketing for 25 years before that. ⁓ I was sort of heading towards my 50s, and I guess it was a sort of minor midlife crisis. I just stopped enjoying what I was doing. I'd loved it. I'd been a director of my own business. I'd been client services director. I'd been out and about and meeting clients, but it just stopped being fun.

Jonathan Thomas (01:42)
⁓ okay. I work at Marketing so yeah.

Tim Barber (02:01)
I won a big pitch and I just couldn't get excited by it. So just came home on Friday and said to my wife, you know, I think I'm done. I need to do something else. I've got this geography and geology degree and not being used at all. she said, well, you're 48, you can't retire yet. We'd better find you a job then. And it literally was. She said, you go and get one of those big sheets of paper out of your study that you do those brainstorming things on and I'll go and get a nice bottle of reds. And we sat outside the garden. She drew a line on the piece of paper and just said,

Let's write a list of things that you enjoy and things that you're good at and two separate lists and at the end of it She said, you know, you keep on saying that when you retire you fancy becoming a tour guides Do you think there's any money in it? So think you could do make a business out of it and I didn't know but I like the sound of it it seemed to stack up and whenever we've been on holiday, we always used to hire a guy just to get a feel for a place and just to

you know, go out on the first day and get some highlights of the place that we could go back and visit under our own steam. So started looking into it, realized that there was a qualification that I could do. And, and also realized that where, whereas there are people that do coach guiding and people that do walking tours, there was also this sort of smaller niche market for driver guides. And I just thought, you know, that that would be perfect for me. So again, I set real Yorkshire tours up, trained the guides and again, put my website live and

very, very quickly, it starts turning into business.

Jonathan Thomas (03:29)
Well, that's awesome. What a great way to decide on a second career. Wine in a brainstorming board, right? ⁓

Tim Barber (03:33)
Yeah.

Yeah. ⁓

Jonathan Thomas (03:38)
So, and I can tell you had a marketing background, because your website's great, and you've got great social media marketing. I mean, well, as a fellow marketer, well done.

Tim Barber (03:48)
It certainly helps with my business and it's put me in a situation where my website does optimize better than a lot of my competition. lot of the people that go into guiding later on in life as a second career tend to be history teachers or people that have had actors or the like, whereas it definitely has given me a ⁓ bit of a leg up having some knowledge of marketing and optimization.

Jonathan Thomas (04:13)
So you're a blue badge guy. For Americans who might not know, what does that qualification mean and why should they look for it as travelers and what does it take to actually earn it?

Tim Barber (04:25)
Okay, it's interesting because when I started looking at this, I'd not heard of a Blue Badge Guide before and ⁓ then we have something over here called a Blue Badge, which is a disabled parking badge. So it's nothing to do with that. Basically, it's a course that runs for a year and a half and it gives you a qualification ⁓ that's qualification run by the Institute of Tourist Guiding and you do it in a particular area. It's 18 months, costs four and a half thousand pounds.

you study it's the equivalent of doing a foundation degree in a year and a half. And at the end of it, after lots of practical exams where you have to guide 25 stops on walking tours or in religious buildings, art galleries, et cetera, plus having to do two and a half hour written exams, if you pass, you get this nice little enamel blue badge here, it sort of gives a mark of quality.

that people know what they're talking about and they've been trained in sort of how to provide customer services and you have the relevant people skills to do guiding. And it's certainly something that ⁓ when I was exploring becoming a guide, I realized pretty quickly to get work from a lot of the VIP and at market tour operators, particularly in America, you have to have this guide or this badge, sorry, or they wouldn't give you business. even though...

it sort of delayed my sort of tour guiding career a little bit while I did the training. One, it was absolutely fantastic doing the training. I'd not done any learning since I'd left university, sort of 25 years before that. And it was just great having that background and having the confidence after getting the Blue Bands that you can go out and put what you'd learned into practice.

Jonathan Thomas (06:10)
So you heard it there, guys. ⁓ It's a mark of quality to have this blue badge. And so when you're booking your tours, look for that. ⁓ So you also have a degree in geography and geology. And how has that academic background enhanced your tours? Because I mean, the Yorkshire landscape is obviously very beautiful and very unique geologically.

Tim Barber (06:33)
It is I think it certainly helped me with the driver guiding because Yorkshire is the largest region in the UK, huge area of 6000 square miles and we're lucky here that we've got the most varied geology in England and the geology sort of influences what the landscape is like.

So we've got a really sort of quite a varied landscapes over here from the Pennine Moors of the Broncies to the sort of rolling hills of the Yorkshire Dales. We've got this flat veil of York that York sits in. We've got sort of the Jurassic rocks on the coast of the North York Moors. And then we've got this chalk upland that's known as the Wold. So one, the geology affects that. But for me personally, being able to explain to people, well, you know.

If I'm doing a couple of days with them, the reason that you've got stone houses there, ⁓ or stone cottages there, because there's a lot of limestone around. There in the Vale of York, where there's just red Triassic clays, the house are out of brick. that's why, over here you've got this wonderful farmland to grow crops. And it's too good for sheep, but here in the Dales, the soil's not good enough, so hence why we've got sheep.

it just enables you to sort of interpret the landscape. And I do think everything from the sort of the style of the houses, the building materials, ⁓ you know, how people use the land is affected by that geography and geology.

that makes sense.

Jonathan Thomas (08:10)
So

you're based, yeah, it makes perfect sense. ⁓ So you're based in Burleigh in Wharfdale. What's it like living in that part of Yorkshire? And where actually, where is it? Can you kind of geographically place it for me?

Tim Barber (08:21)
All right. But,

but Berlin and Walthdale, the closest cities Leeds, ⁓ Leeds and Bradford are very, very close. I generally feel I have the best of both worlds here because I, Walthdale is one of the Yorkshire Dales. So if you've within 20 minutes drive from my house, I can be in the Yorkshire Dales National Park with this beautiful, beautiful scenery. I'm also just like a five minutes drive from the edge of the Pennine Moors.

Jonathan Thomas (08:28)
Thank

Tim Barber (08:48)
So I've got this wild sort of heather moorlands where I walk my dogs. And it's also, I can just jump on a train in my village and within 20 minutes I can be in Leeds city center or within an hour I can be within York. So I've got that culture where I can go for nice meals, I can go to the theater, I can go to gigs. So generally it's a perfect place to be located for somebody like myself who I like.

I love live music but I also love hiking so it just sort of ticks both boxes for me.

Jonathan Thomas (09:24)
Yeah, I'm the same way. I live out in the countryside here in Indiana, but I'm an hour from Chicago. So it's like I like being near a city, but not in the city.

Tim Barber (09:30)
Okay, yeah.

No, exactly. I fully understand that. So I have moved out further into the countryside as I've got older, but I do think that now is probably as far as I'm going to go really.

Jonathan Thomas (09:43)
So, after more than a decade of giving tours, what still excites you about showing people around your shore?

Tim Barber (09:50)
I think in terms of that as a question, I I generally love my job and it really is one of those things that you pick people up, people are on holiday, they want to have a great time, so they're in a good mood. You take them to absolutely beautiful places. More often than not, you'll have a traditional sort of, you know, a lunch in a traditional country pub and then you drop off at the end of the day, you get lots of thanks, a tip and...

You drive home and you pinch yourself and think, have I really been at work? I've just been paid for that. you know, so overall it really is a fantastic job that I, that I, that I love. think for me, I've always been a people person. Even when I was in my marketing role, I was a client services director. So I love meeting people. And you usually find that people that travel are interesting people, people that are on the holidays want to have a bit of fun as well. And so I do think that meeting people is definitely a big.

important element of the role for me. I think in terms of defining what still excites me about the job, I would say seeing people's reactions to the landscape when I'm taking them out. ⁓ You, for instance, take people to the Yorkshire Dales and they've never seen scenery like it. They just can't get over how green it is, how many dry stone walls there are, et cetera. So there's that just wonder that people have.

you take people inside York Minster and it's just that wow factor where they're actually just in awe of the architecture there. And so people's reactions and I think probably the best example of that, something that happened to me last year, I had a lady who was a she was a big James Herriot fan, not particularly the new series, but she was a big fan of the old TV series that was on the BBC decades ago. And she'd read all the books.

when she was a little girl. was the first time in England her husband was infirm so she was actually she'd spent a lot of time looking after him where she just watched the series the original series again and again and again read the books over again again so she finally gets over to England takes a tour with me and I drove through Wensleydale we're then driving through Swale there and I stopped at this great sort of viewpoint where you look back over these sort of wonderful sort of flower meadows with dry stone walls separating them

And she started to sort of well up and start to cry. And I was thinking, oh my God, have I said something? Have I upset her? said, are you all right? And she just sort of I just can't believe it. It's more beautiful than I ever thought it would be. to see a reaction like that, where that landscape that she'd seen had created that sort of emotion from her, that's a pretty special thing to happen.

Jonathan Thomas (12:36)
Thanks

Well, you're selling me with the story here, I...

So Yorkshire is England's largest county. ⁓ the region of Yorkshire is actually bigger than the county because it's been split up. And there's lot of Yorkshire. I like to think of Yorkshire as the Texas of England. It's a very big place. Can you give Americans a sense of just how much variety there is in the region? What can they expect to see when they visit Yorkshire?

Tim Barber (12:54)
Yeah. All right.

I mean, again, if people see Yorkshire, it is that variety. When people come over, a lot of people just sort of, they come to York because they've been told by a tour operator that it's historic city and it's a wonderful city and there's lots going on there. what I used to find is people used to just stop in York for one day on the way between London and Edinburgh. But now we're starting to try and educate people that there's lots more that you can do. Up in Yorkshire,

as well as this varied landscape. mean, the Yorkshire Dales has been on telly recently with TV shows and the like, it's the Pennine Moorland at the Brontes. It's just been noted as one of the Seven Wonders of the World by Convent S Traveler for this year. So there's lots of different, some like beautiful settings from Wild Moorland to these rolling fields with sheep and the like. But you've also got

thriving cities from historical heritage cities like York, but you've got cities like Leeds and Sheffield, vibrant young cities with lots going on, fine dining scenes, lots of shopping and clubs as well. You've also got a wonderful coastline ⁓ in Yorkshire that stretches over a hundred miles with seaside towns like Whitby, Scarborough, Stathes, Fierley, Bridlington.

And then you've got this area called the Yorkshire Walled that sits on the East Coast as well, which is again a wonderful chalk upland, is very different to any of the landscapes that we see in Yorkshire. So, you know, I think it is that variety and I could take people out for five different days and they would see different landscapes each day if they wanted to.

Jonathan Thomas (14:54)
That sounds great. So ⁓ what would you say defines the Yorkshire character? There's a famous saying that Yorkshire men are straight talking and proud. Is that true?

Tim Barber (15:07)
I think that's very much true. Again, there was a call center, some call center research recently that looked at people's different accents and how that sort of character defined them. So it was almost like scousers from Liverpool were seen as a bit too jokey and a bit too, to sort of trust with their money and people sort of from sort of companies were seen as a bit flighty, whereas...

Yorkshire men, we have more call centres here in Yorkshire than anywhere else in England because people want to talk to somebody with a trustworthy voice that talks, tells them how it is and you know, he's honest and straightforward. So I think in terms of those characteristics, they're definitely something that would say sort of carries over into the general Yorkshire character. I do think that we're not flash, we're sort of un-fussy.

We're straightforward. I think there's a little bit of the reason that we don't shout about things. We like to things secret. We know that we live in the best part of England. Why do we need to shout about it? there is something there about that understatedness and that straight talking that we sort of are known for.

Jonathan Thomas (16:23)
So the Yorkshire Dales versus the North York Morris, for someone who can only visit one, how would you describe the differences between them and what are their attributes?

Tim Barber (16:36)
That is a really quite tough question and I need to be careful how I answer this because I do love both the places really. What I'd say is the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors are both our two national parks. So they sit inside of the A1, the Great North Road and they're almost like the lungs of Yorkshire. They're great spaces for going out, hiking and recreation and we have beautiful scenery out there.

Jonathan Thomas (16:39)
Hahaha.

Tim Barber (17:04)
and national parks are very different from national parks in America. And the fact that they're all privately owned, they're not owned by the state. But what being a national park does is it gives them certain protective statuses. It also means that there are certain restrictions on what you could do in those areas. So if you're a farmer, couldn't suddenly sell some land for a block of flats, for instance. they both have big ticks on that sort of basis.

I would say that the North York Moors National Park, from August to September when the heather blooms, it's one of the largest expanses of moorland in the world and it is absolutely stunning when that brown heather just turns into a sea of purple. And it's wild and it's windy on the tops there and it is absolutely beautiful. What I would say there is the scenery, the scenery there, you can drive over it for

miles and hours at a time. I think the Yorkshire Dales perhaps has perhaps slightly more varied countryside and I like quite like something about these the the rolling agriculture of the sort of the fields separated by the dry stone walls, the field barns that they used to overwinter cattle and sheep in, the wildflower meadows, the wildlife. I do think that

The Dales perhaps just slightly edges it on the basis that the Dales are essentially valleys, whereas the Moors tend to sit on the tops of the Dales, on the watersheds between. And even in the Yorkshire Dales, you've got gritstone on the top, so you get a very similar Moorland environment. So on my tours, we tend to go from one Dale to another, driving off over the tops onto the Moors. So if you did the Yorkshire Dales, you'd still get a flavour for the Moors.

So in terms of, I know I've waffled a lot about that for an answer, they're both beautiful places, but if you've just got one day, I think I'd just say the Dale's Tip Tip.

Jonathan Thomas (19:11)
Okay, so York is one of England's most visited cities by tourists. What makes it so special and what do you tend to show people on your historic York walking?

Tim Barber (19:22)
⁓ I mean, York is such an amazing place. ⁓ Late queen, her father, George VI, once came up with the quote, ⁓ the history of York is the history of England. And it really is. we've got other historic cities around the country. And again, there's lots of history in London, but with York, you can actually do it all on foot. You don't have to jump trains or tubes to get around.

A lot of the stuff is within the city walls, so you can actually do a lot of York within the day, including York Minster. With York itself, it has the longest and most complete medieval city walls in England. They stretch almost two miles around the city. There are parts where the Victoria has not gone down, but you can still actually see where the walls would have been and follow the trail.

So the city walls are wonderful and there's some parts with views back over to York Minster which are just awe-inspiring sections. In terms of, I think the sort of, in terms of probably the gem of York would probably be York Minster just because it's the largest Gothic cathedral in Northern Europe. Its scale is just incredible.

You know, it's bigger than Canterbury Cathedral, ⁓ West Middletrubby. It's just a huge building and I spent so much time in there while I was training to be a guide and also to get my accreditation to guide in York Minster. It's just such a special place for me and there's so much I'm still learning about. I'm still learning about the Minster. You can go in there and just look at some of the wonderful or inspiring

medieval stained glass for instance, there's 65 % of all the medieval stained glass in England in York Minster because during the Reformation other places it was smashed and broken. We because we had a guy called Sir Thomas Fairfax who was a Yorkshireman when the parliamentarian troops of the 1600s came to York he told the his troops you do not touch York Minster under pain of death. So we're lucky that Yorkshireman saved the stained glass in York Minster.

So the Minster's definitely, definitely an amazing building. And I would say to anybody coming to York, know, buy a ticket and give yourself an hour and a half to go inside. They also do a ⁓ free to enter even song service in the choir every night at half five. So again, it's worth going along and having a look. No matter what your religious persuasion, it's still quite, you know, it's still an amazing experience to sit in and hear the choirs. ⁓

I also think about York. There's an area of York called Museum Gardens and it's just such a stunning park just between the train station and the Minster. And I don't think there's many places in England within, know, was essentially probably, you know, maybe a square mile if that has so many historic buildings that relate to lots of different eras. So you've got sort of

You've got a medieval hospital that's part of the abbey that dates back to the 1100s. You've got a ruined abbey that is a Gothic abbey dating back to the 1300s. You've got something called the Multangular Tower where it's ⁓ a Roman tower and Roman walls where they've built the medieval city walls over the top of them. There's this beautiful ⁓ Greek

It's a great Renaissance museum, the Yorkshire Museum, as well as four and a half thousand species of plants and trees. that really is a special place and I quite often start tours there because you can set the scene in there perfectly. yeah, certainly so much to offer and I generally think that I would like to...

Jonathan Thomas (23:39)
Well, I agree with you about York Minster. ⁓ We visited when we made our trip to York a few years ago, and it is a stunning, stunning cathedral. ⁓ And I highly recommend seeing the Chapter House. The ceiling in the Chapter House is amazing.

Tim Barber (24:00)
It

is and it's hard to believe that the chapter house for the acoustics that are in there, it's absolutely fantastic acoustics, but it really should have had a central column to support a roof like that. But it amazes me that in the 1200s they were able to work out that they suspended the ceiling from a central point on a pointed roof. So it just literally just hangs over the chapter house rather than that's being supported by a column.

Every time I go in there and explain that to guests, they're blown away by it.

Jonathan Thomas (24:32)
that architectural magic, right?

Tim Barber (24:34)
Yeah,

exactly.

Jonathan Thomas (24:37)
So what's a place in your opinion in Yorkshire that most tourists often overlook but they shouldn't?

Tim Barber (24:44)
⁓ In terms of wrong just saying a place I I would actually say that the Yorkshire walls is In terms of a location or an area really is you know, it's more than a hidden gem It's a hidden it's a hidden area and even friends of mine that live locally to me when I talk about the Yorkshire walls They generally you know, where's that or they've never been there and it's this area of sort of

chalk uplands that sort of sits in a sort of crescent on the east coast just below sort of Filey. It's of east of, east of York and it's just absolutely, it's like nothing else in Yorkshire. We have these wonderful sort of dry valleys because it's chalk, you know, you don't see streams on top of it, but there's odd areas where you get these chalk streams where you get the finest trout going. You know, if you get to a nice restaurant in the walls and have chalk streams, chalk.

stream, crowds, it's absolutely delicious. But you've got lots of historic towns and cities there as well. And I think Beverly is just on the edge of it, which also has a wonderful minster. But also you've got little towns like ⁓ Water, W-A-R-T-E-R. You've got a place like Fixondale, these beautiful little towns and villages, which are picture postcard villages.

but just you hardly see any of the tourists there. It really is one of those hidden gems. There's a stately home on the edge called Sledmere House, which is worth a look at. We also have lots of weird-named towns around the place, like the village of Wetwang, for instance. I would certainly say the Yorkshire Walled would be something that...

Whilst I only do a couple of tours a year, I think it's a place that should get more publicity. There's talk at the moment about it receiving a status in England which is called National Landscape. We have two in Yorkshire already, it used to be called an AONB, an area of outstanding natural beauty. I think it's close to getting that. It's definitely being assessed for that.

And I think if it does achieve that status, it will help put it on a map a bit more.

Jonathan Thomas (27:06)
Interesting. So you must, you get a lot of American visitors on your tours and what draws them to Yorkshire specifically?

Tim Barber (27:16)
Right. I would say about 90 % of my guests are Americans. do get some Canadians and Australians and other nationalities, but the majority of people that I get are sort of are Americans. ⁓ I think at the moment, the pull of TV and set jetting, as they call it, certainly all creatures great and small is just

given us a massive uplift to tourism in the area. But I also think that we're gradually, because we're getting in the news with these condonest listing, lonely planet listing, listing Yorkshire as these places that people should visit if they're in England, it's definitely giving us a little bit more profile. I'd also say what certainly helped me was about five or six years ago, just before COVID, I was lucky enough to get a visit

written grants, which enabled me to go to a number of trade shows around Europe, but a number in America as well, where I was, I was taking along with, you know, other organizations such as Visit Cumbria and Historic Churches Trust. And we were taking along to lots of the larger tour operators on the East coast. And we, we, would get, we had an hour. So each one of us had 20 minutes to sell Yorkshire. And a lot of people, when you were showing them, you know,

the landscapes, the history, et cetera. They getting, I can't believe this. I knew there was a Yorkshire Terrier and I've heard of a Yorkshire Pudding, but I think that sort of education has definitely helped massively. And then again, from the part of the money that we got for the grant was to fly people over on what called fam trips. So tour operators on familiarization trips where ⁓ the tour operators can come over and see it firsthand. So we'd put people up in York and then...

We'd take them out in the day, do a York day, do a North York mall, do a Stately Home day. And then at the end of it, they were just generally blown away by what we'd got to offer. And of all the people that have come over, there's only one that I'm not getting regular business from now. So it just shows that when people see it, they're now sending their guests to Yorkshire for longer periods, I think.

Jonathan Thomas (29:36)
So Yorkshire has its own unique culture and as well has its own unique take on the English language. What are some Yorkshire phrases and slang that Americans should know before they visit?

Tim Barber (29:49)
Right. ⁓ I think in terms of people shorten words. There's a famous, well I guess it's the Yorkshire's unofficial national anthem, is a song called On Ilkley Moor Bar Tat. ⁓ It basically translates as on Ilkley Moor without a hat. It's this weird story of somebody

a couple that go courting on Ilkley Moor, they go into the heather for a quick fumble, they come out and they haven't got the hat and everybody starts singing to them, you know, you're to catch your death with cold if you haven't got a hat and then you'll die and we'll have to bury you and then worms will come and eat you up, the ducks will come and eat the worms up and that thing with bar tat, ⁓ you you often see words shortened to just sort of with t apostrophe beforehand. I'd also say just in terms of

People say things like, then, and things like that when they greet people. I think in terms of words, maybe when I'm saying to people, look, you can put your bags and coats in the boots, they're looking at me strangely and I have to sort of say trunk. when you say, oh, I filled up the car with petrol this morning and they're looking at you and say, what, gas. So I think there's words like that, trousers, what we call trousers, you call pants, whereas...

know if I was wandering around in my pants around York I'd be arrested for indecent exposure. But I guess I think one of the incidents where many years ago I had an American lady and she was researching her ancestry and I'd contact, I'd chat to her about what she might want to do for lunch and she said to me I'll just be alright with some chips and so I booked a restaurant that did sort of pub grub with sort of like you know chips and as we call them or you call them fries so

about quarter to 12 when she said, could we just pull up at this garage? And she came out with a big bag of what I call crisps. And I suddenly realized I'm not going to get any lunch here and my stomach was rumbling for the rest of tour. That was a big lesson that I learned very early on. So yeah, I think there's lots of things like that. But don't let that put any of your American guests off.

Jonathan Thomas (31:45)
you ⁓

You

I don't know.

Thank

So you mentioned All Creatures Great and Small and the OG show has been popular over here for decades, but the new show is also very popular. tell us about your All Creatures Great and Small tour. What locations do you visit and have you ever met the cast?

Tim Barber (32:22)
Okay, yeah, in terms of this new series of all creatures great and small. I remember watching the first episode of the new series during COVID we were locked down just thinking, I know where that is that's Daraby that's that's grassington and you know we were we were locked down we couldn't go out and explore but there was lots of places that you that you knew instantly where they were so as soon as things open up again I put it I put a tour up there and and started to get people people interested in coming over once things open up. I think

What I would say there is, my All Creatures Great and Small tour, if I do it from York, means that you, and lots of people book me there, you lose about 70 minutes either way driving over the Dales. So I do say to people, you're often best staying within the Dales or on the edge of it, maybe somewhere like Harrogate, which is only 25 minutes away from where the tour starts. But we tend to travel at Wharfdale, which is the Dale where I live, but a bit further up.

Key locations include Grassington which plays Darrowby. We also have a little village called Oncliffe that almost plays the back of Darrowby. They use two locations but they're about 15 miles away but they use some very clever editing to work that. There's a wonderful farm up in Yorkethwaite in the middle of nowhere, in one of most beautiful surroundings of the Dales, rolling fellsides above it, a series of barns.

⁓ the early fledgling river war flowing in front of this and it's called Yock and Twake Farm but lot of people that watch the TV series know it as Helen's Farm or Heston Grange so I stopped there. I've got to know the farmer and his wife there and so what's great is if we've got time or people are interested we could sort of stop and have afternoon tea in one of the barns and get up close and personal to the

the barn where Helen and James had their first kiss and they'd sometimes bring in sheep into the barn so they can explain their different breeding programs as a blend hill farmer. So that's pretty special. There's a lovely little church, parts of which date to the 1100s in a place called Hover Home. That's what they use for James and Helen's wedding in the new series and little Jimmy's christening. And then they sort of just, I quite often drive over the moor tops into Mallindale.

Near Malantan there's just a really remote mall and crossroads where James was dropped off in the middle of nowhere in the first episode. So they're probably like the key locations but there's depending on if people are staying in the Dales we can spread out and we can see a wider area over that so we can almost get to this stately home called Broadden Hall that plays Mrs Pumphrey's house in the series. Whereas if you come from York you'd be pushing it to do that in a day.

Jonathan Thomas (35:12)
Interesting, good to know.

Tim Barber (35:12)
So I

think that that's in terms of the all creatures. It's has become such a popular thing in the States. I had a guy that runs a tour company last year who runs coach tours of England for TV and film. ⁓ And he didn't tell me that was his job until ⁓ I picked him up and then said, I'd like you to take me on your all creatures tour, which.

I didn't see as a problem because he's in a different market to me. But said, what do you do your tours in? He said, I've got 55 seats to coach. I said, look, you cannot see over half the locations on a coach. It's just you're driving down little tiny country lanes in the Dales that are just difficult to pass on. You just couldn't get coaches down them.

He realized that pretty quickly. he now stops at the world of James Herring and Thursk and then comes over and just stops at Brassington. I'd certainly say, but an interesting thing that he said to me was that he said that Downton Abbey had always been the benchmark for an English drama in the States really. And he said with this new all creatures on ⁓ Masterpiece and PBS that it's actually viewing figures have actually sort of been higher than Downton, which was like, you

just shows it really has been put on the map.

Jonathan Thomas (36:39)
That's really interesting. ⁓ Can you ⁓ describe the world of James Harriot to us? Because I know a lot people may not know that there's this whole attraction dedicated to the works of James Harriot.

Tim Barber (36:51)
Yeah, I mean what I tend to do is and just to complicate and confuse people I have a I have a trip which I call Harriet country, which is where I Go to places where from James Harriet's life James Harriet was actually a vet called Alf White So James Harriet was his pseudonym. He used to practice at a building in Thursk and after his death they turned the practice into

museum dedicated to everything, particularly the old TV series. So to actually stop there on the morning and then just before lunch to drive over to the Dales to drive through Wensleydale, stop for a bit of cheese sampling at the end of Wensleydale and then drive over Buttertips Pass into Swaledale. You've seen lots of locations from the original TV series but also places from

Alf White's life, like where he used to go to TV testing, where he proposed to his wife, where he went on honeymoon. So that's almost like a tour in itself. then in terms of the new old creatures, great and small, that's in a different part of the dales and it's almost impossible to do both in a day. So you're really looking at Lytton Dale, Wharf Dale and Malham Dale if you're doing a new series locations tour.

So hopefully that explains the sort of the two options there.

Jonathan Thomas (38:19)
Interesting, so it's somewhat so much to see. So. So, uh, well, actually sorry this question is on my list, but you just maybe think of it. Um, Americans, you know we don't get a lot of vacation, so do you find that they want to cram in a lot and a little amount of time?

Tim Barber (38:23)
Yeah, it's a little time.

I do find that and sometimes I do find that and a lot of people do say I wish I'd spent longer here and traditionally when people have spent five or six days in London you know five six days in Edinburgh they've been out on you know 12 hour days at see Stonehenge or Bath from London they sort of say you know I wish we just spent more time up here and I do think also people have visited the Cotswolds. Cotswolds is a beautiful area but

It's very quite twee and touristy now, whereas I think when people are coming around the Yorkshire Dales, I think Yorkshire feels a little bit more real and authentic to them really. I ⁓ do think people should consider spending longer in Yorkshire and that's not just me trying to sell it for my business. There's lots and lots to see up here.

Jonathan Thomas (39:31)
Yeah, I'm one of those Americans where we spent a day in York on our on our way from we drove from Lansden to John O'Groats and I planned just a day and an overnight stay in York and just that was not enough. That was not enough. And I've been dying to come back to Yorkshire and we'll get to that later. But it's it's we're kind of big advocates of slowing down now ⁓ and inhabiting these places because

Tim Barber (39:39)
All right.

Yeah.

Jonathan Thomas (39:58)
If you really want to experience them the way the British experienced them, you'd slow down and you'd stop and have a cup of tea and you do not try and cram so much into a day.

Tim Barber (40:05)
Yeah.

That's very reassuring. And I think with myself and my wife, we went to Sri Lanka a few years ago and we tried to fit everything in. And then we just realized that we're absolutely shattered and we've not done some of the places properly. And we've just sort of you know, less is more. And it's so true.

Jonathan Thomas (40:25)
Yeah. And then it creates a more, you create better memories of the things you slow down and did and spent more time at because they, have more time for connection, more time to meet locals, more time to, to experience the places, the locals with experience rather than just from, you know, a tour bus with 55 other people.

So the the Bron-tees are another huge draw for Americans, especially now with the new Wuthering Heights. What's it like taking literary pilgrims to Haworth and showing them the landscape that inspired those famous books?

Tim Barber (40:49)
Thank

Well, that's great as well. ⁓ I think in terms of taking people to Haworth it's very different from the Yorkshire Dales. It's a little industrial village where the black sort of millstone grit has been darkened from the sort of the smoke that was blown out during Victorian times. ⁓ I think it's interesting taking people through the sort of, I tend to sort of take people and show them parts of Caldervale before you get there.

So they start seeing how that industrialization took over at the time that the Brontes were sort of, at the time they moved to Howard. I think that I would certainly say that for people that come over to want to do Brontes tours, I think not all of them are fit enough or young enough. A lot of the people I take ⁓ tend to be retired Americans with that little bit more time, but.

A lot of them aren't really fit enough to do a hike on the moors up to top with them. So what I tend to do is I try and take to Hebden Bridge and then drive them over the top so they can see that wild moorland and then stop and get them to, you know, stand there and sort of take it all in, breathe in, you know, be blown around by the wind and see the header at first hand. So I think that's quite an important part of it. People get that and they start to understand.

where the Brontës inspiration for books classics like Wuthering Heights came from, but also in Haworth as well when you start seeing the cobbled streets there, an industrial village, and then the passage where they used to live where the rooms have been decked out with a lot of the furniture that was actually in use when the Brontës lived there. You go into the museum section of it and there are tiny little books that the Brontës wrote where you always have to look through a magnifying glass to read that read the

they've written. It really is one of my favorite places to take people on tour and it's yeah it does get quite busy in the summer months but yeah it's certainly ⁓ an interesting place and I think sort of with more and more it'll be interesting to see whether the new Wuthering Heights takes off really. It's been getting one-star reviews over here I don't know what it's performing like in the States there.

I'm not quite sure that the two leads would have been quite who I'd cast in the roles. ⁓ But what it might do is that a lot of it was shot up in Swaledale in the Yorkshire Dales, these sort of disused lead mines up there on the Wild Moor. So it'll be interesting. I'll have to speak to you again next year and let you know whether I've got many Wuthering Heights locations to as sort of inquiries coming in.

Jonathan Thomas (43:46)
I haven't seen it myself yet, but I do know that it was like a box office hit this past weekend. I mean, maybe there are, it's one of the, it's very, I know it's very divisive. you know.

Tim Barber (43:52)
Was it? right, okay.

I won't.

I will have to go and see

it and make my own opinion.

Jonathan Thomas (44:01)
So what's the most common misconception that your American visitors have about Yorkshire when they come to visit?

Tim Barber (44:09)
⁓ That's a good question too. I think it sort of tags on to what you were saying about, know, do they spend too short a time here? I think there's this perception that, you know, York's got history, London's got history, they want to see some history, but there's no history anywhere else. And it's almost like when you start taking them into the Dales, you know, even on my...

even on my sort of all creatures tour, I still stop at Bolton Abbey, even though that's not a location, I still stop at a wonderful sort of ruins, sort of like medieval hunting lodge. When you take them in the little church that James and Helen got married in, parts of it take from the 1100s. It's just, there is history all around Yorkshire and I think that some people just don't quite get that. And again, there are varying sort of...

levels of understanding of English history as well. So part of my job as a guide is to try and bring it to life without just boring people with lots of dates really. So that can sometimes be a challenge as I said to an American guy last summer who was saying, so tell me again were the Vikings before or after Henry VIII? It was just you realize sometimes you just have a hard job with some people than others.

Jonathan Thomas (45:33)
So that's a good segue to my next question is, so for Americans planning their first trip to Yorkshire, what's the ideal amount of time they should spend in the region? So let's assume they wanted to visit London, maybe they wanted to visit Edinburgh, and they want to stop in Yorkshire, how many days should they spend?

Tim Barber (45:51)
I mean, I would certainly say in an ideal world, would say if they could spend five days, that would be, that would give them a chance to see lots. And I'd certainly say in terms of those five days, I'd probably sort of say one, York is a must. I'd certainly say the Yorkshire Dales, whether you're all creatures fans or not. I would say the North York Moors, but also the coast as well, tie Whitby into that. So you get both those landscapes.

I would then say we have a UNESCO World Heritage Site called Fountains Abbey, which again, it's one of the most complete Cistercian monasteries, ⁓ abbeys in England. And that's very close to some other stuff, some weird rock shapes called Brimham Rocks. So I'd certainly say a day out there because it got World Heritage status because it's actually, the ruins are part of a later wealthy gentleman's

Georgian water gardens. So that really is quite a special day. And then I'd probably sort of say the final day, maybe to do a stately home, either Heywood House or Castle Howard, or even check out the Yorkshire Walls for a hidden gem. But I would certainly say that would be my recommendation if people did have five days.

Jonathan Thomas (47:09)
So where would you recommend staying as a bass? York, Harrogate, or somewhere else?

Tim Barber (47:15)
York is a great base if you're doing, if you were doing all those, all those locations from it. Lots of hotels in York. Harrogate's great as well. Harrogate hasn't quite got the history that York's got. was a, I say it was a Victorian spa town, but because it's a conference town, there are, there's lots of plush hotels in these old Victorian spa hotels, great restaurants as well. It's very safe for wandering around in.

It's very easy to get to the Dales from there for all creatures tours, but I'd certainly say York probably because you can go off east to the North York Moors and coasts. Obviously you've got York on the doorstep so you wouldn't be traveling into there or even for getting across to the higher Dales it's still fairly straightforward. yeah I certainly say York is an interesting place to stay and again it depends what

level of accommodation people are wanting. There's definitely different options for different budgets there, but if people are looking for a really top-end five-star hotel there is a relatively newly open place called Granthley Hall near Ripon which is pretty special.

Jonathan Thomas (48:26)
Interesting. I'm noting that one down. ⁓ So ⁓ what's the best time of year to visit Yorkshire?

Tim Barber (48:30)
Now.

I would certainly say I would leave it till April before coming. You tend to get sort of wetter, colder months, January, February, March, things start to pick up around that time. So I'd certainly say April, May and June are really good months for doing tours. I would say that maybe the start of July, end of July and August is when our school holidays are in England. So things get very crowded. York becomes just...

almost too crowded for me really. You also get lots of people going out for the days. So again I'd certainly say maybe to avoid those summer months because you know the prices of everything go up as well. Then back again in September and October they're really great months for touring as well. Then things tend to quieten down over the winter months so it's very seasonal.

Jonathan Thomas (49:27)
So I'm walking Hadrian's Wall this summer and then I'm going to be spending two to three days in Yorkshire afterwards before going on back to London. And so I'm coming from Carlisle. What would you recommend for someone in my situation? I'm not going to have a car, so I was thinking of using York as a base to see a few things that I really want to see.

Tim Barber (49:50)
I think York could be a good base for you because there's obviously a large railway station there that travels to lots of different other areas around Yorkshire. So if you've just got a couple of days, you say you know York pretty well anyway. So I'd say the fact you can actually, you could train it into York pretty easily. mean, so you're going to finish in Carlisle as opposed to the Newcastle way.

Jonathan Thomas (50:14)
Yeah, so I'm doing ⁓ east to west. So I started in Newcastle. I'll finish in Bowness on Solway. And then I'll backtrack to Carlisle for onward travel. I'm probably going to spend a few hours in Carlisle to explore around. And then, yeah, then take the train down to York. ⁓

Tim Barber (50:25)
Okay.

Okay,

I would actually say if you don't have a car, there are some of the places where I'd recommend aren't great for public transport, there's a town, a North York market town called Helmsley. You can catch the bus from York there, which is, ⁓ comes,

picks up just outside somewhere called Exhibition Square opposite Booth and Bar. It's about an hour and 10 minute drive on the bus to Helmsley. There's a Norman Castle there which you can go around and have a look. It's got beautiful quaint streets and independent shops there. And then ⁓ you're obviously a hiker, but obviously if you walked Hadrian's Wall, you might not be wanting to do another walk, but there's a wonderful walk from Helmsley to Revo Abbey.

So if you can't get to fountains, Revo Abbey is probably the second most complete abbey in Yorkshire. Walk to there, it's just, it's in a stunning location in the bottom of a valley, not a lot else around it. And then you can walk back, you can walk up to a National Trust site called Revo Terrace that used to be owned by the Femisham family, where they built these sort false Greek and Roman temples so that they could show off to their friends by looking down at the abbey ruins.

then walk back to Helmsley. So I'd certainly say that would be a great thing that you could do under your own steam. You can actually catch the train from York to Whitby. Whitby as well as fantastic fishing ships obviously has links to some great museums there. There's a Captain Cook Museum and a statue of Cook on Westcliffe. There's a lot of whaling heritage there and there's also this wonderful gothic abbey.

Jonathan Thomas (52:04)
Thank

Tim Barber (52:27)
on the hillside there and obviously the Dracula links to the town as well so I'd certainly say Whitby would make a great day out too. If you want to hire a car then I'd certainly say have a look at my website because there is a Wednesday on Swaledale tour on there where there's lots of history there, a couple of castles, ruin abbey and

There's lots of things to see from ruin lead mines to cheese tasting on that route. ⁓ hopefully that's a bit of food for thought for you.

Jonathan Thomas (53:01)
Yeah, I'm definitely considering Whitby. I'm considering if the North York Shore Moores Railway is running when I'm there during the week, I'd really like to try and ride that and ride it into Whitby. ⁓ I don't know if the schedule is, I love the, there's a TV show about that railway that I really enjoyed.

Tim Barber (53:21)
Pickering railway station where the North York Moors railway starts. That featured in Downton Abbey the movie as King's Cross. again, it's a heritage station made to look like it's the 1940s. Pickering has a 1940s weekend every year where it's decked out. It's absolutely fantastic. If you do go to Pickering another...

definite, just walk up into the town, there's an old church up on the hill there, it's free to go in and they discovered underneath plasterwork these wonderful sort of like medieval paintings that they're now on display where almost like you know medieval vikas were using them as you powerpoints to use as pictures to explain you know religious stories to the congregation so but not many churches have those so that's definitely worth a look in if you head up there.

Jonathan Thomas (54:08)
Okay, one place I really want to make sure I go to, because I've been dying to go there, is Castle Howard. ⁓ I'm a huge fan of Brideshead Revisited, and I'd love to see Castle Howard.

Tim Barber (54:14)
Okay.

mean, Castle Howard is one of my more popular tours, particularly it's probably the easiest, largest stately home to get to from York. It's probably about 40 minutes drive from York. Again, I think now that they've put on buses from York, so you should be able to get there easy enough. ⁓ But it's such a stunning place, whether you've watched rides, had revisited or not.

⁓ They've also filmed a little bit of Bridgerton there recently and it's often used as a location.

Jonathan Thomas (54:54)
Well, you've given me so much to think about now and now we're also out of time. So, ⁓ a wonderful tour of Yorkshire this has been. Thank you for joining us on the Anglotopia podcast. Tim, we'll link to real Yorkshire tours and Tim's booking information in the show notes. Tim has truly shown us why Yorkshire is one of England's most captivating regions. If you're planning a Yorkshire adventure, you couldn't ask for a better guide.

Tim Barber (55:00)
⁓ sorry, I forgot to begin.

Jonathan Thomas (55:24)
than a Blue Badge professional who knows every hidden gem and secret viewpoint. if you enjoyed this episode of the Anglotopia podcast, please subscribe, or leave a comment. And it really helps ⁓ others discover the podcast. And if you love what we do at Anglotopia, please consider joining the Friends of Anglotopia club, where you get early access to new episodes and connect with fellow Angle-Files on our private online community. Plus you'll find exclusive travel guides and tips that you won't get anywhere else.

or the urge we mean of exploring all creatures great in small locations, walking the wild Bronte moors, or discovering the magic of York, remember that the best travel experiences come from connecting with passionate local experts like Tim. So join us next time as we continue our journey through the people, places, and stories that make British culture so endlessly captivating. Until then, happy travels and thank you so much, Tim, for your time.

Tim Barber (56:13)
No problem. Thank you.