Yorkshire Dales National Park
The Yorkshire Dales National Park is a 2,178 km2 (841 sq mi) national park in England which covers most of the Yorkshire Dales, the Howgill Fells, and the Orton Fells. The Nidderdale area of the Yorkshire Dales is not within the national park, and has instead been designated a national landscape. Most of the park is within North Yorkshire, with a sizeable area in Cumbria and a small part in Lancashire. The park was designated in 1954, and extended in 2016. More than 95% of the land in the park is privately owned; there are over 1,000 farms in this area.
National park entrance sign, near Skipton
Stone houses in Hawes, a typical example of Dales architecture
Limestone hills and dry-stone walls in the west of the Yorkshire Dales. This part of the national park is popular with walkers due to the presence of the Yorkshire three peaks.
A traditional pub with rooms to let in Hawes
National parks of the United Kingdom
National parks of the United Kingdom are areas of relatively undeveloped and scenic landscape across the country. Despite their name, they are quite different from national parks in many other countries, which are usually owned and managed by governments as protected community resources, and which do not usually include permanent human communities. In the United Kingdom, an area designated as a national park may include substantial settlements and human land uses that are often integral parts of the landscape. Land within national parks remains largely in private ownership. These parks are therefore not "national parks" according to the internationally accepted standard of the IUCN but they are areas of outstanding landscape where planning controls are a little more restrictive than elsewhere.
Part of the Brecon Beacons National Park (Bannau Brycheiniog), looking from the highest point of Pen y Fan (886 m; 2,907 ft) to Cribyn (795 m; 2,608 ft).
The head of Wasdale – this view appears on the logo of the Lake District National Park Authority
Hadrian's Wall crosses Northumberland National Park
Image: Mam Tor