Farm Stay Yorkshire

Farm stay Yorkshire: what you'll find in the Dales, Moors and Wolds

Yorkshire is farming country through and through, and the stay you get depends a lot on which corner you pick. In the Yorkshire Dales it's hill farming: hardy Swaledale ewes, stone field barns dotted along the valley floors and footpaths that leave from the yard gate towards villages like Malham, Grassington and Settle. Over on the North York Moors the flocks graze open heather moorland, often without a fence in sight, and the coast at Whitby and Scarborough is close enough for a beach afternoon. The Yorkshire Wolds and the Vale of York are gentler, with big arable fields, chalk valleys and quiet lanes that suit a family on bikes.

Most farm stays in Yorkshire are bricks and mortar, set in rural countryside with a garden and parking.

You'll mostly come across three kinds of stay:

• Farmhouse B&B: a room in the farmer's own house, breakfast included, and usually the best chance of a chat about the flock over your eggs.
• Self catering farm cottages: barn conversions and old farm workers' cottages, often with a woodburning stove, an enclosed garden, parking by the door and views over the fields. Plenty are pet friendly. Some sit on a working farm and others just look out over farmland, so ask which.
• Glamping on the farm: pods, cabins and shepherd's huts in a field, many with a hot tub or fire pit and a small bathroom or shower block.

What's rarer in North Yorkshire and beyond is the Feather Down kind of farmstay: a big canvas lodge that sleeps up to six in proper beds, a wood burning stove you cook on, no electricity and animals to meet a short walk from the tent. If that's the holiday you've got your heart set on, read on for how far you'd drive.

Where's the nearest canvas farm stay to Yorkshire?

We worked out real driving times from the four biggest Yorkshire cities to every farm we list. These six are the closest, and you can sort the table by any column. Every lodge on them sleeps up to six, so a family of five has room to spare.

Times are by car with clear roads, so allow a stop and some slack on a Friday afternoon.

Upper Shadymoor Farm: the quickest run from Sheffield and Leeds

At about 2 hours 23 minutes from Sheffield and 2 hours 40 from Leeds, Upper Shadymoor Farm near Shrewsbury is the closest canvas farm to South and West Yorkshire. Joy and Kevan keep a flock alongside ponies, chickens and ducks, there are lambs in spring, and every lodge has its own en-suite hot shower. The extra water package is what families talk about afterwards: a hot tub, kayaks, paddleboards and wild swimming on the lake. Good to know: dogs can't come here.

Pant y March: mountains, a sauna and the dog can come too

Only 2 hours 42 minutes from Leeds, Pant y March is a traditional Welsh sheep farm with around 300 Welsh Mountain ewes, spring lambing and four canvas lodges facing the hills. Stays start from £275 and some lodges come with a private hot tub. There's a sauna to book, a pizza night, and a lakeside beach at Llangywer about 1.5 km away on foot for a morning dip. Dogs are welcome. More farms over the border are on our farm stays in Wales page.

New Barn Farm: the biggest farmyard crew

Mostly a run down the M1, New Barn Farm is about 2 hours 32 minutes from Sheffield and just over three hours from Leeds. It's the one for animal-mad kids, with sheep, lambs, goats, donkeys, pigs, ponies, geese and guinea pigs, plus pony grooming, bike hire and Hannah's homemade meals brought to the tent. Dogs are welcome here too.

Chesters: the pick for York and the north

Heading north instead? Chesters near Jedburgh is about 3 hours 10 minutes from York. Each of the four lodges has a private hot tub and an outdoor hot shower, there's an old walled garden where you pick your own fruit and veg, and wildlife is everywhere, with deer, owls and badgers in the woods around the peaceful estate. Dogs are welcome. It's the farm on our farm stays in Scotland page.

Want a hot tub without booking it as an extra? Hollings Hill Farm near Malvern has a wood-fired one beside every lodge, and you can watch the cows being milked. It's about 2 hours 35 minutes from Sheffield, though dogs can't come. Every farm with a tub is on our farm stays with a hot tub page.

Billingsmoor Farm, DevonMeet the calves, cows, dogs. Sleeps up to 10. Stays from £450.

Check dates

When to go: lambing time and the Great Yorkshire Show

Spring is the season everyone wants, and Yorkshire runs later than you might expect. On lower farms lambing can start in March, but up in the Dales of North Yorkshire and on the moors the hill flocks mostly lamb from Easter or mid April, and the ewes and lambs don't go back up onto the moor until May. Book a Dales farm holiday over the Easter holidays and you'll often catch it in full swing.

Can't wait that long? Cannon Hall Farm near Barnsley runs a lambing festival over February half term and a spring lambs event around Easter, with talks from the farmers and bottle feeding demonstrations. Dates change each year, so check before you go.

High summer belongs to the Great Yorkshire Show in Harrogate: four days of prize cattle and sheep, show jumping and food halls, running from 13 to 16 July 2027. Tickets go on sale in November 2026 and are sold in advance only, and the show has sold out every year since 2021!

Autumn is quieter.

The summer crowds thin out, the heather on the North York Moors fades from purple to bronze, and October half term on a farm means muddy boots, conkers and dark evenings by the stove.

What kids actually do on Yorkshire farm holidays

Forget the timetable. The best days on a farm are the slow ones:

• collecting eggs from the hens before breakfast
• watching the farmer move the sheep with a dog, or bringing the cows in for milking
• helping at feeding time where the farmer offers it (always ask first)
• following a footpath across the fields to the village pub for lunch
• a tractor ride, a wobbly bike ride down the lane and marshmallows over the fire pit

Walking through farmland comes with a few rules. The Countryside Code asks you to leave gates as you find them, keep dogs on a lead around sheep and cattle and stick to the paths. For family walks with big views from Malham or Grassington, the Yorkshire Dales National Park website has routes graded by length. On the moors side, Dalby Forest near Pickering has waymarked cycle and walking trails, and the Cleveland Way follows the cliffs between Whitby and Scarborough.

Fancy the real thing? Our guide to working farm holidays explains how much you can join in with on the canvas farms.

Questions to ask before you book

A Yorkshire farm cottage and a canvas farm stay can look alike in the photos, so it pays to ask a few things first. Pet friendly listings in particular vary a lot: one farm cottage might have an enclosed garden and free parking by the door, the next a lane full of livestock and a shared yard.

Our farm stays with animals page shows exactly which animals each canvas farm keeps, from donkeys to pigs.

Close to home or worth the drive?

If you're weighing up farm stays in Yorkshire against a canvas farm further off, it really comes down to two things: the drive, and the kind of night you want. A farm cottage in the North Yorkshire countryside near Skipton, Harrogate or Pickering keeps the journey short and the weekend long, with a pub up the lane, a hot tub on the patio if you book one and the telly if it rains. A canvas lodge in Shropshire, North Wales or the Borders takes a couple of hours more, then gives you a woodburning stove, oil lamps, the farm right outside the tent flap and no screens at all.

Both make a cracking family holiday.

For a quiet, rural few days in North Yorkshire, base yourself near Settle or Pateley Bridge and walk from the door. For a peaceful week where the children forget their tablets exist, the canvas farms are hard to beat.

Not sure where to start? See all the farms compared side by side, or use farm stays near me to sort the lot by distance from home.

Compare the farms

Guest scores and review counts are from Feather Down's own farm pages. "Stays from" is the lowest price in Feather Down's feed for a sample stay; your dates will differ.

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