Easily the best place in England to see, hear and smell seabirds! More than 200,000 birds (from April to August) make the cliffs seem alive – with adults bringing food to their nests, or young chicks making their first faltering flights.

With huge numbers to watch, beginners can easily learn the difference between gannets, guillemots, razorbills, kittiwakes and fulmars. The easily recognisable puffins (here between April and July) are always a delight. Specially-created cliff top viewpoints are wheelchair accessible with care.

To be found in peaceful North Yorkshire, the Walled Garden is a stunningly beautiful contemporary garden, quite unlike any other. Open to the public for the first time in 2004, people visit from all over the world and it has been received with great acclaim.

In 2006 The House and Garden were featured in the television series ‘Hidden Treasure Houses’ on Five. Open for just one month a year, and sitting in its own, more traditional gardens, Scampston Hall is one of the finest country houses in Yorkshire. Lovingly restored by the Legards, it is a family home and contains many fine works of art, furniture and china.

Newly opened for 2008, the Woodland Walk provides visitors with the opportunity to visit the traditional gardens around the house including the Rock Garden, the Woodland Garden and the ‘Capability’ Brown lakes and park.

Just off the A64, between York and Scarborough, Scampton Walled Gardens is easy to find.

Ryedale Folk Museum is Yorkshire’s leading open air museum. Set in a three and a half acre site in the North York Moors are 19 re–constructed historic buildings from the local area including shops, thatched and timber framed cottages, workshops and an Elizabethan Manor House.

The museum covers 400 years of the history of Ryedale with collections of archaeology, costume, photographs, craft, tools and domestic equipment.

The Museum has been a Registered Charity since 1966 and as an independent museum relies upon income generated by admission fees, shops sales and grants in order to remain open to the public.

As you step through the entrance of the Ryedale Folk Museum you will be transported back in time. Take a walk through the site and learn about the history of Ryedale from centuries past. Take a look through the shop, there is an opportunity to find that perfect gift or something to remember your visit.

In 1947, the Council’s Libraries and Museums Committee decided to create an Art Gallery in Scarborough at Crescent House.

Originally, the Gallery did not occupy the long gallery, which currently shows eighteenth and nineteenth century oil paintings. This space formed part of the Caretaker’s quarters as well as the rooms in the basement area which are now Crescent Arts. The Caretaker was responsible for the three buildings on the Crescent: Wood End, a Natural History Museum, and Londesborough Lodge, administrative offices for the Council and the Art Gallery.

Scarborough Art Gallery did not have much of a collection of fine art when it first opened. Though the Scarborough Corporation already owned the Sir Meredith Whitaker collection, which came in 1937, two works by John Jackson, and watercolours by HB Carter.

The original exhibition Scarborough through Three Centuries occupied the whole available display space at that time. Reports describe how the exhibition was hung over both floors and works by Francis Nicholson filled a whole room whilst HB Carter was represented by ‘more than a dozen works’. The journalist at the time noted that it was John Piper’s watercolours that provided ‘a striking contrast to the strictly conventional note of the exhibition as a whole.’ The exhibition was shown for a relatively short time, from 17 November 1947 to 4 January 1948. Perhaps the reason for this was because major works were borrowed from the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Gallery has since become well known for showing a variety of national touring exhibitions as well as originating major new shows.

Scarborough Art Gallery occupies two floors of a nineteenth-century Italianate Villa on Scarborough’s beautiful Crescent. With views of South Bay from its first floor, the Gallery is an ideal location to show a variety of historic and contemporary visual art. Expect to see high-quality national touring exhibitions and originated shows, as well as a fascinating historic art collection.

The construction of Castle Howard took more than 100 years and spanned the lifetime of three earls and numerous architects and craftsmen. As the house was built and decorated the grounds surrounding it were filled with lakes, temples, monuments and a grand mausoleum. A thriving estate grew up encompassing several villages and acres of farmland.

The house and grounds have grown and altered through successive generations of the family, and it is this essential dynamic that has made Castle Howard so special today.

The single most significant event since the day it was built has been the fire of 1940, which destroyed the dome and nearly 20 rooms. For the next few years much of Castle Howard was open to the skies, its once splendid rooms gutted shells. George Howard, who inherited the house, after the deaths in action of his two brothers in World War Two, was determined that the house should be lived in once more, and made the bold decision to recover Vanbrugh’s architectural masterpiece.

It is largely due to his remarkable efforts that Castle Howard is today still home to the Howard family, and enjoys such popularity with the public welcoming nearly 200,000 visitors each year.