Wensleydale Creamery and Hawes

Wensleydale Cheese Shop Tasting

At Wensleydale Creamery a new interactive experience takes you on a journey through the art of cheese-making, with the opportunity to watch Wensleydale cheese being made by in the creamery. Visitors can also enjoy a full programme of cheese-making and butter-making demonstrations, as well as cheese-grading and cheese tastings in the creamery’s new demonstration area, providing a fascinating insight into a thousand-year history of Wensleydale cheese making. There’s lots for the little ones to do too with hands-on games and activities, with clips of your favourite Wallace & Gromit films, colouring kits, quizzes and puzzles too.

Hawes waterfall

The drive to Hawes from Sedbergh along the A684 runs through the beautiful valley of Garsdale before passing into Yorkshire at Garsdale Head, where there is a station on the Settle-Carlisle Railway line. The road then begins to drop down into upper Wensleydale, passing through the charming village of Appersett before reaching Hawes. Here, as well as the creamery, you will find many shops, pubs & eateries and the Dales Countryside Museum.

Continuing down Wensleydale you will come to the villages of Bainbridge and Aysgarth where a side road takes you to the spectacular medieval Bolton Castle.

Tour de France on the Buttertubs

Alternatively turn north from Hawes to travel over the famous Buttertubs Pass (the Cote de Buttertubs where an estimated 10,000 people watched the Tour de France in 2014). Pause at the layby shortly after the summit to look into the enormous limestone holes where the devil is said to have stored his butter. The road then takes you steeply down into the remote valley of Swaledale and the villages of Muker and Gunnerside.