Getting from York to Manchester
· Updated · BootsnAll
York was Eboracum to the Romans and Jorvik to the Vikings, and it has the walls, the Minster and the medieval streets to show for both. Manchester is 70 miles west, was the first industrial city in the world, and has spent the last thirty years turning that inheritance into something worth visiting.
They make a good pair, and the railway between them crosses the Pennines, which is the best part.
Trains from York to Manchester
Around an hour and a half direct, with trains once or twice an hour through the day. Most run from York to Manchester Piccadilly, and many continue to Manchester Airport, which is useful if you are flying out.
The trans-Pennine route is one of the more scenic mainline journeys in England. It runs through the Calder Valley and over the moors, and in winter, with snow on the tops, it is worth the window seat.
A word of caution about this particular corridor: it has been the subject of a long upgrade programme and has a reputation for disruption, with weekend engineering closures and replacement buses more often than the average British line. Check your date rather than assuming.
Fares follow the usual British pattern. Advance tickets, released around twelve weeks ahead, tied to a specific train, cheapest by far. Off-Peak flexible within hours, Anytime flexible and dear. A railcard is a third off. National Rail Enquiries for times, and buy from the operator direct.
Breaking the journey
This is the argument for the train over everything else. Leeds is on the line and worth a stop. So is Huddersfield, whose station frontage is a vast neoclassical portico that the poet John Betjeman called the most splendid in England, and which has a statue of Harold Wilson outside it.
Hebden Bridge, in the Calder Valley, is a short detour and is the sort of place people move to and do not leave.
Coaches and driving
Coaches take around two and a half to three hours and cost less. National Express and Megabus both run the route.
Driving is about an hour and a half across the M62, the highest motorway in England, which crosses the Pennines at over 370 metres and is regularly the first road in the country to close for snow. There is a famous farmhouse sitting in the middle between the carriageways near Rishworth Moor, which the motorway was built around rather than through.
Both cities charge for driving older vehicles into the centre and neither is cheap to park in.