James Herriot’s story about a country vet, with scene-stealing backdrops and a coterie of country characters first instilled the Yorkshire Dales into the popular imagination back in 1972. The beauty of Yorkshire wasn’t lost on Herriot, whose real name was Alf Wright: ‘At times it seemed unfair that I should be paid for my work,’ he writes in All Creatures Great and Small, ‘for driving out in the early morning with the fields glittering under the first pale sunshine and the wisps of mist still hanging on the high tops.’
And it seems millions of others are now discovering the joys of this landscape too. The revised TV adaptation of this book, about the trials and tribulations of a country veterinary practice in the middle of the 20th century (first televised in the 1970s and currently showing on Channel 5) has coincided with a marked increase in visitor numbers, including the number of young people discovering the Dales.
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