Why Highwayman Tours Is Now Offering Private Yorkshire Tours from Leeds
Launching private tours from Leeds feels a little different for me.
Harrogate made sense because I used to work there and know the journey and the area well.
Leeds is more personal.
My family came from Leeds.
My great-granddad drove the steam trains in Leeds.
And, for better or worse depending on who you support, my football team has always been Leeds United.
So Leeds has never just been another city down the road.
It has always been part of me.
A city I’ve always had a connection with
I was born in Yorkshire and I’ve lived in York for most of my adult life, but Leeds has always been there.
Family connections. Football. Days out. Roads I know. Places that feel familiar.
It is a very different city to York, and that is part of why I like it.
York wears its history on the surface.
Leeds feels bigger, faster and more modern, but scratch underneath and there are stories everywhere.
Industrial Yorkshire. Railways. Mills. Markets. Football. Music. Communities that grew around work and transport.
And for me, that railway connection is personal too.
Knowing my great-granddad drove steam trains makes the old railway history around Yorkshire feel that little bit closer.
Maybe that is one of the reasons I still love taking people through railway country, through old industrial villages, across the Pennines and up towards the North York Moors Railway.
So why start tours from Leeds now?
Quite simply, people were asking.
Highwayman Tours was built around private tours from York, and York will remain the main base.
But once people started asking whether I could collect them from Leeds, I realised there was no good reason not to make it a proper option.
Especially because Leeds is actually an excellent starting point for a lot of Yorkshire.
If you are staying in the city, you should not have to get a train to York just so you can get into a car and head back west again.
That is pointless.
So selected Highwayman Tours can now start and finish directly from central Leeds.
For eligible published tours, Leeds collection and return adds £120 to the York tour price.
That is one supplement for the whole private booking, not £120 per person.
The tours are still private for up to four guests.
Leeds opens up a different side of Yorkshire
Starting in Leeds changes the shape of the day in a good way.
Haworth and Brontë Country become an obvious choice.
The Yorkshire Dales work beautifully.
Bolton Abbey is easy to reach.
So are places like Grassington, Pateley Bridge, Brimham Rocks and Fountains Abbey.
And one of the things I enjoy most is that you can leave a major city and surprisingly quickly find yourself on the kind of roads where dry stone walls replace buildings and the landscape starts opening up around you.
That contrast is brilliant.
One minute Leeds.
Then villages, moors and Dales.
Brontë Country is probably the most natural Leeds day
If I had to choose one tour that feels particularly right from Leeds, it would probably be Brontë Country.
You can head out towards Haworth, explore the village, visit the Brontë Parsonage Museum, see the moors and spend some time in a part of Yorkshire that feels completely different from the city you left that morning.
There are also some lovely routes back that allow us to avoid simply retracing the same road.
That is something I care about.
The drive is part of the tour.
I do not want eight hours to feel like a series of sat-nav instructions between attractions.
If there is a better road, a better view or somewhere worth slowing down for, I will normally take it.
And then there is Leeds United
I probably cannot write something about my connection to Leeds without mentioning football.
My team is Leeds United.
That has brought varying amounts of joy and misery over the years, as anyone who supports Leeds will understand.
But that connection matters.
Football clubs are tied to places in a way that is hard to explain if you do not follow one.
You learn the roads into a city.
You recognise pubs, streets, railway stations and landmarks.
You associate places with particular days, matches and people.
So Leeds has always felt familiar to me.
Offering Highwayman Tours from the city does not feel like expanding into some random new market.
It feels like finally joining up another part of Yorkshire that has always been part of my own story.
Private tours from Leeds, without the coach-tour feel
The whole point of Highwayman Tours is that you are not joining a big group.
There is no coach timetable.
No being told you have 27 minutes somewhere because another 40 people need to get back on the bus.
It is your group, up to four guests, travelling with a local driver-guide.
We can stop when something catches your eye.
Spend longer somewhere you love.
Move on if somewhere is not doing it for you.
And if the weather changes, which this is Yorkshire so it occasionally might, we can adapt.
That is how I like to travel myself, and it is how I think Yorkshire is best experienced.
It feels like the right time
Highwayman Tours began in York.
That is still home.
But adding Leeds feels natural.
There is a family connection.
There is the railway connection.
There is a city I genuinely like.
There is a football club I have followed for years.
And there is also a very practical reason. Leeds is one of the best places in Yorkshire to start a private day out into the Dales, Brontë Country and beyond.
So if you are staying in central Leeds, I can now come to you.
No journey to York first.
No coach.
No car hire.
Just your group, your route and a local guide who already has plenty of reasons to enjoy heading back into Leeds.