Let's move to Grassington and Wharfedale, North Yorkshire | Money | The Guardian

Let's move to Grassington and Wharfedale, North Yorkshire | Money | The Guardian

What's going for it? Devoted readers of Let's Move To… (there are some) will know I'm a sucker for remote market towns in the Yorkshire Dales that look like the setting for the latest Wallace and Gromit. I have a peculiar fantasy in which I renounce the city and the ills of modern urban life, and move to one to become a potter or teashop proprietor living among doughty old rambling types called Cyril and Thora. Not for me an island in the Maldives! Grassington hits the spot. I arrived with relief, after a wrong turn near Aysgarth, hotly pursued by a Renault Megane trying to get past. What is it that grabs me about remote market towns in the Yorkshire Dales that look like the setting for the latest Wallace and Grommit? Higgledy-piggledyness, cobbled market squares, no-bullshit Yorkshiremen and women, convivial old pubs, roaring countryside, dampness, mossiness, stone courtyards, tumbledown bookshops and butchers', great cultural life (such as the big-name-attracting Grassington Festival), old hippies who settle here and open astrology gift shops. Only one thing missing and, alas, it's a fantasy deal-breaker: no seaside.