Between Leeds And Middlesbrough Is A Charming, Historic City With Walkable Routes, Shops, And Outdoor Fun

Between Leeds and Middlesbrough, on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales National Park, delightful Ripon is Yorkshire's smallest city. Its compact center is a warren of charming shop fronts hung with flower baskets and bracketed signboards, few prettier than the delightful Kirkgate — one of the city's oldest streets, lined with galleries, florists, and cafes. The city is easy to explore on foot, its old cobbles and narrow passageways leading from the city's heart, Ripon Market Square, toward the imposing and genuinely stunning Ripon Cathedral — the reason this town-sized settlement gets to call itself a city.

Ripon's small size is part of its appeal. You can spend the morning following one of the city's many scenic walking trails while browsing the shops and market stalls (on Thursdays and Saturdays). Stop along the way to take in the wonderful cathedral, then swap historic streets for riverside paths and iconic Yorkshire countryside in the afternoon.

For travelers heading to Yorkshire, Ripon offers a genuinely walkable historic center with easy access to the outdoors. Ripon is connected by regional train from Leeds via Harrogate, from where you'll need to take a bus to reach Ripon, with the entire journey taking around one hour and twenty minutes. The A1 motorway passes close to the city for visitors arriving by car, making it a convenient stop on longer journeys between London and Edinburgh.

Begin your walk at Ripon's Market Place, where a long baroque obelisk has stood since 1702. The surrounding streets form the heart of Ripon, with art galleries, specialty shops, antique stores, and cafés tucked into a relatively small area. From hand-crafted fly-fishing equipment to jewelers to hard-to-find bike parts, Ripon has a little something for everyone with flower shops, clothing stores, and collectable trinkets.

From here, the easy City Centre Discovery Trail follows mostly level paved streets through some of the city's oldest corners, passing numerous historic buildings, including a curious Grade-II-listed cabmen's shelter, where Victorian carriage drivers would wait for fares while avoiding the rain. The main attraction, though, is Ripon Cathedral, which has an astoundingly long history with roots stretching back to the seventh century, including an Anglo-Saxon crypt to match, a leftover from the site of the original church founded by St. Wilfrid. Visitors can descend into the crypt, whose claustrophobic stone passages were, according to legend, modeled on the tomb of Jesus Christ in Jerusalem. Above ground, the cathedral has evolved over more than a millennium with medieval carvings, striking Gothic architecture, and elaborately carved misericords (or mercy seats, in modern English), adding further fascinating details.

Despite its small size, Ripon has a trio of interesting museums too: The Courthouse Museum, Prison and Police Museum, and Workhouse Museum. The Workhouse Museum is of particular interest as it's housed inside the original Victorian workhouse.

From the Peak District, which is home to the stunning hidden gem, Padley Gorge, to the breathtaking Yorkshire Dales, a lovely destination in the British Isles, Yorkshire is a stunning county, spanning roughly 6,000 square miles. Ripon sits surrounded by much of this beauty. You can take the City Centre & River Skell Discovery Trail, which begins in Ripon city with the peaceful Spa Gardens before following a wildlife corridor alongside River Skell. Another route, The Miller's Walk, rambles along with the river and includes views of Ripon Cathedral and the city's historic architecture and museums.

Originally built to connect the city with the navigable River Ure, Ripon Canal provides waterside walking routes that lead hikers into the countryside. Walk it from the city centre toward Littlethorpe for a two-mile stroll to see local birdlife, while the surrounding landscape becomes more rural.

A longer trek is Ripon Rowel Walk, which forms a scenic loop through quaint Yorkshire villages and historic landscapes, as well as spectacular sights, such as Markenfield Hall and Fountains Abbey. A UNESCO World Heritage Site, Fountains Abbey is around four miles from Ripon. There you'll find a stunning abbey ruin, similar in scale and aesthetic as the Whitby Abbey on Yorkshire's windswept cliffs so haunting it inspired Bram Stoker to write Dracula; only Fountains Abbey is surrounded by an idyllic parkland, home to 300 deer.