Knotties Stone

The Knotties Stone sits on the moors above Ilkley, a Bronze Age standing stone that's been here for around 4,000 years. It's not massive - won't take your breath away like Stonehenge - but there's something rather good about stumbling across it on a walk, realising people were marking their landscape long before Roman roads cut through Yorkshire.

Getting there means a proper moorland tramp from Ilkley town centre, which sorts the casual visitors from the walkers pretty quickly. The stone itself is weathered, covered in what look like cup-and-ring markings, though honestly you'll spend longer trying to work out which marks are ancient and which are just time's doing its thing. The real appeal is the walk itself - open moorland, decent views back towards Ilkley, the sort of place where you understand why Bronze Age folk bothered to haul a stone up here in the first place.

Walkers will get the most from this. Kids under ten might find the walk tedious without the payoff being dramatic enough. There's no visitor centre, no tea shop, no facilities whatsoever - it's just the stone and the moor. Free to visit, naturally.

If you're based at Fairmead Farm Glamping or St Helena's Caravan Park nearby, it's a good half-day outing when the weather's decent. Combine it with other walks on the Ilkley moors and you've got a solid day out. Won't change your life, but it's the sort of spot that makes a moorland holiday feel properly connected to somewhere with actual history.