Skipton is a country market town, up in the Pennines, at the southern base of the Yorkshire Dales. It's a small, friendly town with a population of around 16,000. It has history, a castle, cobbled streets, ducks and canal boats. It's a pretty town to walk around, and gets thousands of visitors.The name Skipton comes from the Saxon word for sheep - the town really began as a trading centre for sheep and wool. The canal came and went, the mills came, and now it's a big tourist centre for people passing through to see the Yorkshire Dales.
Harrogate is a pleasant spa town to the south-east of the Yorkshire Dales famous for its tea shops, flower shows, turkish baths, antique shops, and the Harrogate International Conference Centre. The town is also famous for its associations with the great English crime novelist Agatha Christie, who "disappeared" here for a few days in the 1930s (!)