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The Channel 5 All Creatures Great and Small series is filmed primarily in the Yorkshire Dales — in the Wharfedale and Wensleydale areas of the National Park — with some additional locations in the wider North Yorkshire region. This guide covers the main filming locations, what appears in which episodes, and how to visit them. It does not give specific addresses for private properties, out of respect for the owners, but it gives you everything you need to know before visiting with us.
The fictional town of Darrowby, where Siegfried Farnon's veterinary practice is based, is primarily represented in the Channel 5 series by Grassington in Wharfedale. Grassington's cobbled market square, the narrow lanes running off it, and the surrounding streets provide the principal street scenes of the series.
Grassington is one of the finest Dales villages and is worth visiting for its own sake. The market square — where the Darrowby Fair scenes were filmed, where James encounters familiar faces and where the rhythms of Dales town life play out — is recognisable from virtually every episode. The building used as the exterior of Skeldale House (the vet's surgery) is on a specific street in the village that most fans locate on arrival.
The pub scenes in the series — the evenings when James, Tristan and Siegfried decompress after a long day's work — were filmed at a pub in the Dales that is still trading as a pub. We lunch here on the tour. The interior is very largely as you have seen it on screen. The bar is the same bar. The rooms are the same rooms.
This is not a pub that was briefly converted for filming and has since reverted to normal life. It is a pub with a long-established character of its own, and the series chose it because it already had the atmosphere they needed. Eating lunch there is one of the genuine pleasures of the tour.
Helen Alderson's farm — the place where James first encounters her and where much of their evolving relationship plays out — is in the countryside outside Grassington, in the characteristic Wharfedale landscape of pale limestone walls, traditional field barns and open fell pasture. The specific farm is private property and we do not visit the farmyard itself, but the surrounding fields and the view of the property from the public road are part of the tour. At certain points in the series, the landscape around the farm is as much a character as the buildings — the wide views, the quality of the light, the specific shape of the valley — and seeing it in person is one of the most satisfying moments of the day.
Two churches are central to the series — one to a moment of near-disaster, one to the resolution of James and Helen's story. Both are in the Yorkshire Dales, and they are very different buildings in very different settings, which is part of why the production team chose them.
The first church — where Helen nearly marries Hugh Hulton — is a substantial Dales church in a village setting, with the kind of architectural confidence that reflects the prosperity of the dale in the 18th and 19th centuries. The second — where she actually marries James — is smaller, older, and tucked into the Dales landscape as though it has always been there, which in one form or another it essentially has.
Visiting both in a single day, with the relevant scenes played on screen at each location, gives the two scenes a resonance that the television episodes alone cannot quite achieve.
The grand house associated with the magnificently indulgent Mrs Pumphrey and her equally magnificent Pekingese Tricki Woo is a substantial Dales country house — the kind of building that speaks of old money and extensive grounds, which is precisely what the character requires. We visit the exterior. The grounds are private.
Beyond the specific filming locations, the series uses the Yorkshire Dales landscape as a continuous presence — the fells above Grassington, the limestone walls running to the horizon, the hay meadows in summer, the moorland edge in winter. This landscape is present throughout the day, not just at specific stops. Your expert storyteller explains the farming culture, the geology and the seasonal character of the Dales as you travel through it.
You can find many of these locations independently. Dedicated fans have mapped them, websites list them, and a day in Grassington with the series queued up on your phone will show you a great deal.
What the tour adds is the technology — the live scene playback at each location that places you directly inside the filmed moment — and the knowledge of an expert storyteller who has spent years learning this landscape. The detail of why each location was chosen, what the production team were trying to achieve at each stop, the behind-the-scenes context that changes how you watch the series afterwards — this is what you are booking.
Our All Creatures Great & Small tour visits every key Channel 5 filming location. £169 per person. Maximum seven guests. Departs from Windermere, Bowness, Ambleside and Oxenholme.
More from All Creatures country:
Primarily in Grassington, Wharfedale — its cobbled market square and surrounding lanes provide the principal street scenes.
No — specific addresses of private properties aren't published, out of respect for the owners, though all publicly accessible key locations are visited.
Yes — it's a real, working pub, and lunch on the tour is taken there.