Why Hambleton hits the heights as the best place to live in Yorkshire

An area which includes the towns of Northallerton, Thirsk, Bedale and Easingwold is the only Yorkshire region in the UK top 50 based on a range of measures including residents’ health and life expectancy, personal well-being, employment, crime rates and weather.

So what is that makes Hambleton such a lovely place to live? Here are five things we love about the region.

It’s a vet’s life

The region was immortalised in the works of local veterinarian Alf Wright, whose fictional persona James Herriott featured in a series of books that inspired the BBC television series All Creatures Great and Small. Without Mr Herriott, who would have known that putting your arm inside a cow could be so funny? Please don’t try this at home.

The hills are alive...

...with the sound of cyclists huffing and puffing their way up two of the UK’s iconic rides, Boltby Bank (aka Sneck Yates Bank) and White Horse Bank, which are both included in Simon Warren’s best-selling book, 100 Greatest Cycling Climbs. The region is named after the same Hambleton Hills.

To market, to market...

...to buy a myriad of loveliness from many of the stalls that can be found in the cobbled marketplace of Thirsk every Monday and Saturday. The market at Northallerton (Wednesdays and Saturdays) is well worth a visit, too.

Hobbling merry Christmas

There is no shortage of options for walkers in this part of the world but the Hambleton Hobble, a 50-km circular route which takes in some of prettiest parts of North Yorkshire is up there with the best and a fine way to blow off the Christmas cobwebs.

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/yorkshirewalker/details/hambleton_hobble.htm

Horse play

Carved deep into the limestone of Sutton Bank, the White Horse of Kilburn has kept a watchful eye on Hambleton since 1857, when it was dug by a local schoolmaster. Readers of the Yorkshire Evening Post paid for the horse to be restored in 1925 and it is now ‘groomed’ every three years.