The Knowhere Guide

Best and Worst in Skipton, North Yorkshire*

Skipton, North Yorkshire Triumphs and Tragedies

Favourite Building

• Stanforth's Pork Pie Shop
• The house on raikes road with the big arched roof at the front with rustic cobbles, fab! if up for sale please sell (to me!!)
• Girls High School. The sixth formers there are absoloutely stunning.
• The Castle and Church are lovely I have to say. Girls High School is nice too but only cos I went there :P
• Walker Foster Solicitors-3 High St.
• Skipton Castle. Everyone must have heard about it! Ermysted's Grammar School, one of the finest Grammar Schools in the country - over 500 years old.
• Got to be the mills by Granville Street.

Demolish It Now Building

• Efe's Kebab house (think it's called something like Bodrum Nights now) - i've been to Bodrum and it's nothing like this place!
• hmm tricky one... the girls school so they'd all have 2 join in wiv us
• The local night club - Bliss. Previously (and still commonly) known as After Dark. Popularly known as Piss, After Death, Shaft A-Tart. DESTROY IT NOW!
• Big Skipton Building Society thing that is floodlit at night- when it was built my friend told me it was a ghost house and I used to shit myself in bed.
• superdrug,
• Skipton Building Society on the High St. - what an eyesore seen from out of town.
• town hall
• Aireviile school the worst place EVER !
• Savage Crangle
• The ROSE AND CROWN Pub gets worse every time I go in.
• The church and the castle. No more three hundred year old tourists.

The Best Things

• Skipton is at the foot of the Yorkshire Dales and is surrounded by beautiful countryside. The high street is a lot prettier than most towns and has enough shops to cater for most people's needs.
• lots of stuff to do
• All the cute teenage lads doing their market stalls - oohh the sweat!!
• I'm sorry, but Stanforth's Celebrated Pork Pie Establishment (opposite The Castle, near the Parish Church) is seriously and unfairly under-represented here. The MOST delicious pies, hot, fresh from the oven, oozing meaty juices for only 55p - undoubtedly the first thing to make a bee-line for if you're in Skipton. They also do half-pound bacon butties for only 99p - perfect Saturday morning fayre. DON't MISS IT
• Black Russian with a Guinness Top. The absolute best drink in the world ever. Normal Black Russian (Vodka, Tia Maria and Coke served over ice) but with just the tiniest bit of Guinness added at the end. Pulls the whole thing together and makes it perfect. As served in The Albion - quite possibly the best pub in Skipton and certainly in the top 2.
• The geographical location- so close to country and big cities like Leeds, Manchester etc. Easy to get to Scotland- its slap bang in the middle really. Education (if u are lucky to go to Grammar Schools) is 1st class.
• Skipton is gorgeous, and the best thing about it is that with each step you take you see something you want to go see. There's the canal basin, the marketplace, the church and its common, and the castle. Behind the castle is a fantastic walk in the woods (continue up the main busy road to the right of the castle gates for about five minutes, then turn left into the woods). Best of all it seems like a real market town, with shops that the locals can actually use. It's not over-run like Haworth or York, where every shop is either a twee tea shop or an overpriced souvenir stall.
• The new millennium walk - gets you away from the grockles on the high street
• surrounding countryside
• Speed testing route on the bypass. Leave Little Chef roundabout on A65/A59 junction towards Harrogate. If you're doing 100mph as you go under the bridge you're RAIDIN' you'll need to watch for the roundabout soon after. Honda VF750 hits 80mph by the fourth lamp-post. Delta Integrale 125mph under the bridge.
• All of it
• Lots of good pubs, Street Market on Monday's Wednesday's, Friday's and Saturday's. 'Gateway to the Dales' - lots of nice countryside very close by. Bizzie Lizzie's fish and chip shop - some of the best fish and chips in the North.
• Stanford's pork pies, I've got a freezer full of them down here in Chester.
• My girlfriend, her mum and dad, her mates, her dogs, her brother, not a lot else really. Small town violence.
• Saturday Night Entertainment:- Several pints of Tetley Bitter in the Castle pub, followed by swift vodkas in the Fleece and then on to the underrated After Dark - it is a good night out providing you have done the Tetleys and vodkas first. At 2am, on to Efes Kebab House round the corner for a doner or a pizza (far better than Chico's).
• Skipton is a very nice place for people who like the beautiful scenery. It has a nice big castle which takes about three hours to see this. The out skirts are full of green grass and beautiful farm industry.
• My Dad's Gas Shop; this is going to be opening soon so I hope him and his partner will do well!
• Location; it is the Gateway to the Dales after all, and two minutes drive away is Eastby Moor from where you can view down to Ilkley, Barden Towers over to Appletreewick, and over the moor and reservoir - my favourite bit of Yorkshire!
• Skipton's best feature is its bypass, which leads the traveller sixteen miles further up the A65 to Settle, which, althought even smaller with loads of pubs, is much more interesting.
• The Fleece pub.

The Worst Things

• During the summer and especially on bank holiday weekends, Skipton is besieged by tourists, the majority of them coming across from Lancashire and down from the North east. In adition to these casual day trippers are coach loads of pensioners,drawn in by the tea-shops and market stalls. You can normally tell who the local people are among the crowd because they're the ones trying to walk quicker than everyone else, often having to resort to walking along the road with the traffic.
• Shopping.... Skipton is a nightmare for shopping, especially for clothes unless you like to buy at one of the many charity shops available. However if your want either a mobile phone or a pair of glasses you will be in heaven, 'cos there are oodles of retailers to choose from!. Otherwise go to Keeflah!.
• Bloody mobile phone shops. Skipton is a fairly small Dales town, so why... WHY, does Skipton have at least 9 mobile phone shops. I'm not talking about shops that sell mobiles as well as other things (althought there are plenty of those as well), but what the hell does Skipton need 9 shops that sell NOTHING but mobile phones for??? We don't even have a mainstream electrical retail place now - Dixons closed down and reopened as... yes, you've guessed it A MOBILE PHONE SHOP!!!!! I think I'll just go and have a quiet lie down in a darkened room!
• its all crap
• The devonshire hotel for gods sake let wetherspoons duy it and renovate it as at the moment it is a dump
• BLOODY MOBILE PHONE SHOPS - Skipton is not that big a place and yet we have at least 6 (six!) shops in the middle of town that sell NOTHING but mobile phones and at least another dozen places that sell mobiles as well as other stuff (WHSmith, Wollies etc.) Skipton is rapidly turning into a town of 2 shops - mobile phones and charity shops. If you don't want the latest mobile, a kaftan or a nylon jumper then the only thing to do is go to Keighley (shudder!) - on second thoughts, I'd rather have the kaftan!
• Old crinklies on coach trips That woman who runs you down in her purple motorised buggy on Shortbank road!!! Its proximity to the cess-pit aka Keighley
• Small Town White Trash as my brother puts it. Greatwood Estate, thugs roaming the streets just "looking for a fight" cos they are such losers they cant do anything else. The Aireville "v" Grammar school thing when Aireville tossers start having a go at u cos u passed a test at 11 and they didnt. I think this breeds the whole small town violence thing. Skiptonians are really paranoid so they go around looking for other people to put down to make them look better. And the Blue Rinse Brigade "eee Elsie shall we go in here" zimmering down the high street while you are trying to get something to eat on your dinner break.
• The millennium walk brings you back to the High st
• tourists looking for the next tea & scone shop......(dilly-dally-ers)
• BABYLON - Escort Cosworth and Fireblades. Mondeo V6 also red BMW unmarked.
• The After Dark
• Not enough decent nightclubs. Nothing to do for teenagers.
• Small town violence, being on the wrong end of it.
• The worst thing about Skipton is that it is a complete old persons' tourist town, so a trip to the shop usually involves wading through a mass of grey hair and false teeth, all commenting on how beautiful the church and castle is.
• Tourists on Market Day; can't really moan as long as they spend their brass! But it is impossible to move uptown!
• Measures in the Woolly Sheep; whilst last at home I read in the Craven Herald about the landlord giving short measures and being caught. Well, he is a bit miserable anyway!
• After Death; you were right about it being crap. It's bloody awful! But where else is there to go now that the other crap place, The Waterfront, closed down?
• The Skipton Building Society buildings, as condemned as an eyesore by Prince Charles himself.

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Last updated: 2008-06-12