Where to stay in Hawes: booking the highest market town in the Dales
Stone cottages and the market street in Hawes with fells rising behind
At around 850 feet with a working cheese dairy, a Tuesday market and England's highest single-drop waterfall a mile and a half away, Hawes charges roughly £100-150 a night and earns it.
The case for sleeping at the top of Wensleydale
Hawes sits where Wensleydale narrows and steepens, about twenty miles up the dale from Leyburn and hemmed in by high ground on three sides. It is the highest market town in Yorkshire, and altitude shapes everything: the weather turns faster, the light is bigger, and the town feels more self-reliant than the softer places down-dale. Around 900 people live here, but the Tuesday market, the auction mart and a full run of shops mean the place functions as the service centre for a very large area of empty country.
Book it if you want to be inside the high Dales rather than commuting to them. The Pennine Way runs through the town, Buttertubs Pass over to Swaledale starts at the north end, and Wharfedale, Ribblesdale and the Howgills are all within forty minutes. Book it also if you like the idea of a base where a cheese dairy, a ropeworks and a museum are all within a ten-minute walk. This is a working town with visitors, not a visitor attraction with residents.
Who will find it too remote
Hawes is a long way from everything. York is about two hours, Harrogate ninety minutes, the coast three hours plus. Even Richmond is an hour by the Buttertubs or an hour and a quarter round by Leyburn. If your itinerary includes coastal days, city days or abbeys in the east of the county, do not base yourself here — you will spend the holiday driving. It is also unsuitable for anyone nervous about narrow, steep, unfenced roads, because most routes out of Hawes involve at least one.
Car-free visitors need to think hard. There is no station in Hawes; the nearest is Garsdale, about six miles west on the Settle-Carlisle line, with a connecting bus that does not run to every train. Buses down Wensleydale to Leyburn and Northallerton exist but are limited, and Sunday services in winter are thin. If you have no car, verify every leg with the operator before booking, or choose Settle instead. Dinner options are also finite: several pubs, a couple of cafés, and everything shut early on a February Monday.
What a night costs up here
Expect £100-150 for a double with breakfast in a Hawes pub or guesthouse in season, easing to £85-115 in November, January and February. That is a little above Settle, a little below Grassington, and roughly £20 under Harrogate for a comparable room. Given how much of the town's trade comes from Pennine Way walkers, single rooms and single-occupancy rates are more common and more reasonable here than in the honeypot villages — often £65-85.
Below that, the town and the nearby hamlets carry hostel and bunkbarn beds at around £25-40 per person, which is the standard Pennine Way rate, and campsites near the river at roughly £12-20 a head. Above it, the outlying country hotels and larger inns in the surrounding villages — Bainbridge, Askrigg, Gayle, Hardraw — sit at £130-190 and usually have parking and a bar that does real food. For a couple with a car, an Askrigg or Bainbridge room at £120 with a taxi in for dinner is the sensible compromise.
Walking distance from the market street
The Wensleydale Creamery is a five-minute walk from the middle of town: a working dairy with a viewing gallery over the vats, a cheese shop that will let you taste before you commit, and a café. The Dales Countryside Museum occupies the old station buildings at the eastern edge, four minutes the other way, and is the best single explanation of how this landscape was farmed, mined and roped together. The ropemakers, still twisting rope on site, sit alongside it.
Hardraw Force is the walk to prioritise: about a mile and a half north on a footpath across the fields, where a beck drops roughly 100 feet in a single fall into a wooded amphitheatre. Access is through the inn at Hardraw, which charges a small admission — check the current fee and opening on the day. Gayle, with its packhorse bridge and the old mill, is ten minutes south on foot. Longer, the climb up Wether Fell or out along the Pennine Way towards Great Shunner Fell gives you the top of the dale in three to five hours.
Where in town to book
The main street between the church and the market place is the obvious choice: pub rooms and small guesthouses, everything walkable, and rates around £110-140. It is also where the through traffic goes, and on Tuesday market day the street is busy from 7am. Ask for a rear room facing the fells and the trade-off disappears. Parking behind these properties is usually a handful of spaces; confirm yours in advance rather than circling.
Gayle, ten minutes uphill on foot, is quieter and often £10-15 cheaper for the same standard, with the beck running through the middle of the hamlet. Hardraw, a mile and a half north, gives you the waterfall on your doorstep and a genuine sense of being out of town. Askrigg and Bainbridge, four and five miles down-dale, are prettier villages with more character in their inns and slightly better food. What to skip: isolated farm lets more than three miles out unless you are entirely content to drive for every meal.
The drives that justify the location
Buttertubs Pass is the headline: five miles over the top to Swaledale, climbing to around 1,700 feet past the deep limestone shafts that give it the name, and dropping into Muker. Do it early, do it slowly, and be ready for sheep on the road. Second, the road west to Ribblehead, twelve miles, ending under the twenty-four arches of the viaduct with Whernside above — one of the great sights in northern England and free. Third, down-dale to Aysgarth Falls, ten miles, where the Ure steps over three separate falls in a wooded gorge.
Semerwater, the largest natural lake in the Dales, is five miles south-east and takes ten minutes to reach; go at dusk. What to skip from Hawes: attempting Bolton Castle, Middleham and Richmond in one day, which is 70 miles of narrow road and leaves you nothing. Pick two. And treat the Buttertubs road with respect in winter — it closes in snow and drifts even when the valley roads are clear.
Weather, seasons and packing
At 850 feet, Hawes runs two or three degrees cooler than York and considerably wetter. Summer highs typically sit around 17-19C, with proper cold and lying snow possible from December through March. Rain is the constant variable, not the temperature: pack waterproofs in July as seriously as in October, because the dale head catches weather off the Pennines all year. Long light in June means walking until 9.30pm, which is the single best reason to come then.
For value and reliability together, target May, June or September. July and August fill with families and Pennine Way traffic, and rooms in town go four to eight weeks ahead. Tuesday market is worth timing your stay around — livestock at the mart, stalls on the street, and the town at its most itself. Winter is cheap at £85-100 and genuinely atmospheric, but check what is actually open before you commit, because several cafés and one or two of the outlying inns reduce their hours or close midweek.
Before you book
What people ask before booking Hawes.
Not in the town. Garsdale, roughly six miles west on the Settle-Carlisle line, is the nearest, with a connecting bus that does not meet every service. Northallerton on the East Coast Main Line is about 35 miles east. Confirm bus connections with the operator before planning a car-free arrival.
About 30 minutes each way on the field path from the north end of Hawes, roughly a mile and a half. Access to the fall itself is through the inn at Hardraw and there is a modest admission charge; check the current price and seasonal opening on the day, as both vary.
Reasonably. The Creamery, the museum and the flat riverside walks work well, and family rooms run around £130-160. The limitations are wet-weather options, which are few, and driving times to anything outside the dale. For a first Dales trip with small children, Skipton or Settle offers more fallback.
