3-star hotels in Leyburn

Leyburn is not pretty in the way Richmond is pretty, and that is the point. It is a wide, windy, working market place with a bank, two butchers, a hardware shop, an auction house and a car park in the middle of it, sitting on a shelf above the River Ure with all of Wensleydale spread out to the west. Friday is market day and the square fills with stalls by 8am. On a Tuesday in February it can feel bleak; on a June evening with the light going long over Penhill it is one of the best addresses in the Dales.

These hotels sit both on the square and well beyond it. The Black Swan Hotel, The Wensleydale Hotel, The Bolton Arms and Richard III Hotel are all on the Market Place itself, walking distance from the stalls, the Sandpiper Inn and Campbells of Leyburn. Others are village inns in the surrounding dale: The Wheatsheaf Inn at Carperby, The Saddle Room at Tupgill Park near Middleham, The Dante Arms at Middleham, The Foresters Arms at Carlton in Coverdale, The Blue Lion at East Witton, The George & Dragon Inn at Aysgarth, The Bridge Inn at Grinton and The Buck Hotel and The Kings Arms Hotel at Reeth. The glamping pods at Redmire and the house at Middleham's Grove Square suit those wanting self-catering space. Couples and walkers fit the village inns; families do better where family rooms and kitchens are listed; a short break is easiest from the Market Place addresses.

Getting there and around

Northallerton, seventeen miles east, is the nearest East Coast Main Line station — around 20 minutes from York, 2h30 from London — and the 856 bus links it to Leyburn and on to Hawes, though only a few times a day and barely at all on Sundays. The 156 comes over from Richmond and the 159 up from Ripon via Masham; all stop on the Market Place itself. Darlington is 24 miles by road and the usual choice for a hire car. Leyburn is compact, and the Wensleydale Railway, with its Leyburn station on Harmby Road, is a heritage line running a handful of days a week in season — never assume it is a way of getting anywhere.

When to go

Friday is market day, when the square fills with stalls by 8am. On a Tuesday in February it can feel bleak; on a June evening with the light going long over Penhill it is one of the best addresses in the Dales. The terrace walk above the town, starting from the far end of the Market Place by Shawl Terrace, is free and open all year and generally firm underfoot. Check the Wensleydale Railway timetable before you build a day around it, and note that the buses run barely at all on Sundays.