NameJill
Area CoveredYork
InterestsFood, History, Travel writing

Introducing Jill - your Friend at the other End!

About Me

Hi, I live in York, a lovely old medieval city with the longest stretch of city walls in Britain, towering York Minster, the broad river Ouse with river cruises daily, good shopping and great restaurants. We have the world class museums including best railway museum in the world - and it's free -

York is my town and I live right in the heart of it with my husband and daughter. It's a very manageable city, easy to find your way around (just look for the Minster) and all the main sites are all within walking distance.

We also have a seaside cottage on the coast at Staithes, a quirky, traditional fishing village on the east coast just north of Whitby.

Once a place for smugglers, this coastline has a rich history and unique geology. I can tell you about guided walks, the best place to search for Jurassic fossils and how to identify jet.

Captain Cook lived in Staithes and Whitby, so did a group of Victorian painters and Staithes is an artists colony still. The area is wonderful for holidays, ideal for children with beaches, rock pools, fishing, good food and places to stay.

Whitby is of course famous for its abbey, for Dracula and English fish and chips. Nearby are the North York Moors, 554 square miles of heather moorland that becomes a vivid purple carpet when it blooms in August.. It makes wonderful walking country with picturesque villages and a steam railway which you can combine with a moorland walk or picnic.

My real job was as a TV documentary producer where I traveled the world, but in 1994 I left to write a guide book to the best food producers, cafes and restaurants in the region called Good Food in Yorkshire.

Since then I have written about food and travel in the UK, especially Yorkshire. I have covered York and the Yorkshire Dales, the North York Moors and the north east coast and regularly contribute to Time Out guidebooks. Titles include Seaside; Countryside; Perfect Places and 1000 Things for Kids to do in the Holidays. In the course of writing these I have covered Yorkshire from drovers road to city walls.

As well as travel books I inspect restaurants for many of the national food guides so I get to visit the best (and the worst) places to eat. I am currently building a website guide called www.squidbeak.org, an honest, independent guide to places to eat and stay in Yorkshire.

I'd be happy to guide you to the best places to eat from the quaintest English tea room to the grandest Michelin starred dining room and when you are ready to lay down your head, somewhere individual and special. You can take your pick in Yorkshire from carriages to castles.

I'd love to share the secrets of York from spooky ginnels to gorgeous tea rooms, where to shop away from the chain stores or further afield to Castle Howard, where the series Brideshead Revisited was filmed and on to the moors, the coast and the famous Yorkshire Dales.

Yorkshire is England's biggest county yet it is a still a relatively undiscovered corner of Britain, there's plenty of space, lots to see and locals call it 'Gods own country'. Come and see.

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