To encourage more people to visit Yorkshire’s Christmas markets, train operator Northern has a special £2 advance ticket to provide festive-goers with an incentive to visit four of them.

Northern has chosen Christmas markets at Scarborough, Knaresborough, Beverley and Ilkley as alternatives to well-established city centre markets across the North of England. The special tickets are only available on certain services as follows:

• between Hull and Scarborough from Friday, 24 to Sunday, 26 November for visits to Scarborough Sparkle;
• between Leeds and York to Knaresborough from Saturday, 2 and Sunday, 3 December for visits to Knaresborough Christmas Market Weekend;
• between Selby and Beverley from Wednesday, 6 and Friday, 8 December for visits to the Beverley Festival of Christmas ‘Made in East Yorkshire Markets’;
• between Leeds and Bradford Forster Square and Ilkley on Sunday, 17 December for visits to the Real Food Ilkley Christmas Market.

As well as these four markets, there are other Christmas Markets taking place across Yorkshire, and a full list is available on the Christmas Markets in Yorkshire 2023 website at daysoutyorkshire.com

The £2 tickets (and children for £1) are only available on Northern train services and must be purchased from Northern’s website or its app. three days in advance of travel. However, if anyone is unable to buy their tickets online, they can be purchased by telephone on 0344 811 5111. Further information and the tickets can be found here.

Passengers should note that in line with the rest of the National Rail network a new timetable will come into force for service across the North of England on Sunday, 10 December. Anyone intending to travel after that date is advised to use the ‘Check My Timetable’ feature on the Northern website for more information about their local station.

Mark Powles, commercial and customer director at Northern, said: “We know some of the big cities across our network can get pretty crowded this time of year, so we wanted to do something to encourage people to try an alternative location instead.

“Christmas Markets make a huge contribution to the winter economy of local towns and we hope these special £2 tickets encourage more people to ‘go do their thing’ in Scarborough, Knaresborough, Beverley and Ilkley.”