BBC host Elizabeth Alker: My Yorkshire, from the Calderdale moors to the Hebden Bridge music scene

My grandparents often took my sister and me to the National Science and Media Museum (The National Museum of Photography, Film & Television as it was) when we were kids. We always begged them to take us there because it seemed like such a surreal and magical place. I still remember the elation (and motion sickness) I felt after tumbling over Niagara Falls in a barrel thanks to an early screening of Niagara: Miracles, Myths and Magic (1986) on the Imax screen there - the first Imax in Europe.

What’s your idea of a perfect day, or a perfect weekend out in Yorkshire?

Pick up a coffee and a Craggies Farm Shop, bacon sandwich at Hebden Bridge market, then walk through Nutclough Woods to Old Town where you can get fabulous cake in the Post Office cafe. Back down in Hebden, catch a matinee screening at the Picture House, a gorgeous old movie theatre that dates back to 1919. Later get a glass of great quality natural wine in Coin. On Sunday take a stroll along the canal from Hebden Bridge to Mytholmroyd then get the bus (or walk) to The Robin Hood at Cragg Vale for Sunday Roast.

What’s your favourite part of the county – and why?

West Yorkshire of course. Partly because it feels very familiar to me. When I was a lonely student in Leeds, or a struggling freelance journalist in London, I’d make trips home and as soon as the M62 or the train hit the West Yorkshire Pennines, I’d start to feel at home. I think the moors here are very beautiful. I feel at my best when I’m in them. They offer me the same peace and escape that I think a lot of people find at sea.

Do you have a favourite walk – or view?

At the moment, it would have to be the view from Stoodley Pike and the walk up there, which I keep making via various different routes. Once I got myself and my little Yorkie, Terry, so lost in a bog, I thought we were never going to get out. We finally made it to the Hinchliffe Arms at Cragg Vale in such a dishevelled state I think the bar staff thought we’d been lost up there for weeks. The views up there are breathtaking and they’re quite different on every side of the monument - the wide open country out towards Mankinholes; the forest which rolls down towards Cragg Vale; the craggy ridges back over to Todmorden. I love the way that, no matter where you are in Calderdale, Stoodley is always the same distance away.

Which Yorkshire sportsperson would you like to take for lunch?

Beau ‘Beau 'n' Arrow’ Greaves, who is a darts player from Doncaster and the current women’s World Champion. I’d get some tips from her so I could beat my husband in the pub.

Which Yorkshire stage or screen star would you like to take for dinner?

Jake Thackray because it would be an absolute riot. He’d hopefully sing me something bawdy, tell some excellent jokes and showbiz anecdotes.

Has Yorkshire influenced your work?

There is a very interesting and thriving experimental music scene in Calderdale with labels like Basin Rock, Folklore Tapes, Architects of Harmonic Rooms & Records and Preserved Sound, venues like Nan Moors, The Hebden Bridge Trades Club and The Golden Lion and musicians, composers and songwriters like Nwando Ebezie, Magpahi, Sophie Cooper, Natalie Sharp and Spaceship, to name a few. So I’m learning a lot about the local scene and I’ve stumbled across so much fabulous new music to play on my Radio 3 shows here.

What is your Yorkshire ‘hidden gem’?

There is a hidden little bowling green in Hebden Bridge where a group of true music enthusiasts host ‘Ambient Bowls’ afternoons. There’s nothing cryptic about the title, we play crown green bowls and listen to ambient vinyl records played from the delightful little old clubhouse on a fabulous sound system. Bring a bottle!

If you could choose somewhere, or some object, in Yorkshire to own for a day, what would it be?

It would be the Beauhoff baby grand piano, which belonged to the family of the composer Frederick Delius while he was a child in Bradford. Delius is one of my favourite English composers and even though he wrote most of his work abroad, I’m sure the landscape around Bradford colours and shapes the atmosphere and tone of some of his music. I’d play the Beauhoff all day and hopefully feel inspired.

What do you think gives Yorkshire its unique identity?

I think perhaps the fact that it is full of a huge range of identities. In West Yorkshire alone, and within a 30 minute drive from my house, you could be listening to some of Europe’s top contemporary classical ensembles (I’m thinking of the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival), enjoying Bradford’s best Tandoori lamb chops, be in a cracking boozer on the tops, soaking up the unique artistic talent of David Hockney in Saltaire or taking in traditional folk music in the pubs of Hebden Bridge. Even just in the tiny village of Heptonstall you could visit the grave of an American literary giant (Sylvia Plath), eat some fantastic Thai food and drink local ale at The Cross Inn, see one of the world’s first octagonal and methodist chapels and hear classical music of a very high standard in Heptonstall parish church. And that sums it up really. My husband is from Sheffield, which feels like a different country. I need a translator! Yorkshire’s extreme diversity is what makes it so unique and wonderful.

Do you have a favourite restaurant/ pub?

The Trades Club in Hebden Bridge. Roz’s Indonesian Food is unbeatable and there’s such a unique and brilliant atmosphere in there.

Do you have a favourite food shop?

The farm shop at Gordon Riggs in Walsden is the place of a lazy chef’s dreams.

Who is the Yorkshire person that you most admire?

Charles Edward Taylor who is one of the people behind Yorkshire Tea.

Name your favourite Yorkshire book/author/artist/CD/performer.

The Offing by Ben Myers, set in Robin Hood’s Bay, was my favourite lockdown read. I felt so swept away to a different time and place by the truly evocative way that Ben writes about place and people.

If a stranger to Yorkshire only had time to visit one place, it would be?

Whitby, for the myths, moors, cockles, fossils, sandy beach, ice cream and abbey views.