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The highest and wildest terrain in the North York Moors is in the central moors , bounded by Rye Dale in the west and by Rosedale in the east. Purple swathes of summer heather carpet the tops, where ancient crosses and standing stones provide hints of the moorland's distant past. Lying around eight miles northeast of Helmsley, one of Yorkshire's quaintest villages, HUTTON LE HOLE , has become so great a tourist attraction that you'll have to come off-season to get much pleasure from its tidy gardens, its stream-crossed village green and the sight of sheep wandering freely through the lanes. The big draw is the Ryedale Folk Museum (Easter-Oct daily 10am-5.30pm; GBP3.25; ), an ever-expanding set of displays of local life and work over a two-acre site. The museum also houses a National Park information centre (tel 01751/417367). For accommodation , try the Barn Hotel (tel 01751/417311; GBP50-60), on the through road just down from the museum, or the Georgian Hammer and Hand (tel 01751/417300; GBP50-60), a period B&B on the village green. If you stay the night you'll have plenty of time to become acquainted with the Crown , the friendly local pub . Farndale is entered from the south by a minor road from Gillamoor , a little to the west of Hutton le Hole. Further up the vale the country lanes are packed in spring with tourists come to see the area's wild daffodils, protected by the two-thousand-acre Farndale nature reserve . The flowers grow in several parts of the dale, but the best area is north of Low Mill , where roads from Gillamoor and Hutton le Hole meet, about four miles north of the latter. The Moorsbus runs a special "Daffodil" service every Sunday in April and over Easter, shuttling visitors from Hutton le Hole. Rosedale , a couple of miles east of Farndale, is slightly wilder and steeper than the latter, and has a network of wild upland roads ranging over its moors, which are densely studded with prehistoric tumuli and ancient stone crosses, including Ralph Cross , which stands sentinel at the isolated crossroads at the top of the dale. The largest of its communities, trim and tidy ROSEDALE ABBEY , four miles northeast of Hutton le Hole, preserves only a few fragments of the Cistercian priory (1158) that gave it its name, most of them incorporated into St Lawrence's parish church. It's hard to believe now, but in the last century the village had a population of over five thousand, most employed in the ironstone workings whose remnants lie scattered all over the lonely high moors round about. Rosedale village itself gets packed on summer weekends, a fair proportion here to sit outside the Milburn Arms (tel 01751/417312; GBP70-90; closed Jan), overlooking the small green. There's a popular campsite at Rosedale Caravan Park (tel 01751/417272) down by the river, while north of Rosedale Abbey, you can reach the Lion Inn (tel 01751/417320, ; GBP50-60) on windswept Blakey Ridge , a couple of miles south of the junction with the Hutton le Hole-Castleton road (along which the Moorsbus travels).
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