Richmond is the natural gateway to upper Swaledale and the wider Yorkshire Dales. Driving west on the B6270 takes you through Reeth, Gunnerside and Muker — stone-walled hill villages set against some of the loneliest moorland in England — and on to Tan Hill Inn, the highest pub in Britain at 1,732 feet, isolated on the watershed between Yorkshire and County Durham.
Going east, Yorkshire's coast is about an hour and a half away: Whitby, with its abbey ruins and Dracula associations, and Robin Hood's Bay just below it, both make full days. North, Barnard Castle is twenty minutes and pairs the Bowes Museum (an unexpected French chateau in the Pennines) with another medieval river-side ruin. The market town of Leyburn, twelve miles south in Wensleydale, is the launching point for the cheese country around Hawes.