DESTINATIONS Hill and DALE

The responses were quite hilarious when we mentioned Yorkshire as a destination for a year-end getaway. Some friends looked incredulous; others looked quite put out – verging on huffy. “What do you mean England? In December ?” As if foregoing a crowded beach filled with overworked Jo’burgers was somehow, well, traitorous.

I’ll admit to being a complete Anglophile. Boris’s hairdo and Brexit tedium aside, that little island remains one of the most wonderfully eccentric and downright lovely places on the planet. Yorkshire, and the Yorkshire Dales National Park, in particular, is one of its timeless gems.

From Heathrow we hire a car