STEPHEN McCLARENCE, a native of the White Rose county, gets a tourist's view of his home patch on a weekend tour by coach and brushes up on his dialect

FIRST things first. . .I need to buy a new mac.

"Raincoat not mac, " gently corrects John Buckingham at Simpsons of Skipton, one of Britain's dying breed of gentlemen's outfitters. He eyes me up and down. "You'll want XL I should think, " he says. Very forthright. Very Yorkshire.

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He points me to the rack beyond the Panama hats and the silk dressing gowns.

I buy a raincoat (yes it's XL) as assistant Barbara West heaves great piles of jackets up and down stairs to change the seasonal stock. "I've carried all the summers up and all the winters down, " she says. "I'm shattered."

This traditional and rather w himsical world is what my wife Clare and I find at every turn during our weekend in Yorkshire.

The county has plenty of busy cities but what register most are places strong on local character and old-fashioned charm, the qualities that won the cobbled main street in Skipton, on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales, the Great British Street of the Year award a couple of years ago.

We've joined a whistlestop tourorganised by the county's tourist authority Welcome to Yorkshire and the Coach Tourism Council, which promotes coach holidays.

Nearly seven million people took a UK coach tour last year but the council isn't complacent.

Chief executive Chris Wales says it aims to broaden the appeal of the transport to "people who probably haven't been on a coach since one took them to swimming lessons at school".

I'll own up here. Clare and I live in Yorkshire and I was born in the county though I've never knowingly said ee-bah-gum or stuffed ferrets down my trousers (well, only on special occasions).

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I already know most of the places on the tour but I've come along to look at them through outsiders' eyes and to see us as others see us.
We take in a castle, an abbey, a stately home, a canal cruise, a preserved railway and a few pints of Yorkshire beer, packing a whole season of days out into a weekend and mostly avoiding the weary clichés of Heartbeat or Last Of The Summer Wine country.

We get off to a bracing start in Skipton, a sturdy little town with high hills rearing behind it.

As we stroll down High Street from the castle's stone gatehouse we pass a firm of solicitors wutheringly called Savage Crangle and a bakers selling Fat Rascals, industrial-scale northern scones that could sustain you through an A ntarctic winter.

We take a cruise up the Leeds and Liverpool Canal which weaves pleasantly through the town and past a striking statue of cricketing legend Freddie Trueman hurling himself into a fast bowl.

Thick fog lingers cussedly through much of the next day as we drive along narrow twisting lanes to Wensleydale. Even so, the high vantage point of our coach, from David Palmer Travel of Normanton, near Leeds, gives a far better view of the landscape than I've ever had from a car.

AS WE go our voluble guide Keith Mulhearn shares a lot of well-I-never facts.

"The room over there next to the For Sale sign, " he says, as we pass the Buck Inn at Buckden, "is where Denis Healey had his honeymoon."

Then he gives us a crash course in basic Yorkshire dialect.

We dutifully chorus "Ow's tha bin?" which my Sheffield-born mother would have considered a very common mode of speech.
In Masham, a handsome village with a broad market square, most of the group tours the celebrated Black Sheep Brewery while we head for the church fair in the town hall where Clare buys a packet of vanilla sticks.

"Use them in cakes, " advises the lady on the stall. "I don't make cakes, " says Clare. "Well use them in custard then, " says the lady.
"I don't make custard either."

"Darling, " says the lady, fixing her with an incredulous stare, "what do you do with your time?"

On to Fountains Abbey with its landscaped ruins and the homely world of Ripley Castle, a country house where the coat stand is made of antlers and the panelled Tudor rooms exude history.

We've spent most of the day in rural North Yorkshire but next day the sun shines and we move on to the more urban West Yorkshire.
The Victorian model village of Saltaire, near Bradford, is a World Heritage Site. It was built by textiles magnate Sir Titus Salt whose portrait shows a luxuriant beard tumbling down his chest like a waterfall.

The village centres on the vast Salts Mill with its bustling restaurant, book and art shops and permanent exhibition of pictures by Bradford-born David Hockney.

Next door in the Victoria Hall is Britain's only harmonium museum featuring 120 of the instruments.

"The black one is a ladies' boudoir model, " points out Phil Fluke, who runs the museum with wife Pam.

On to the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway. Shrieking and steaming our train hauls us uphill and through stations decorated with old tin signs for "Melox, the Food of the Dogs" to Haworth, once home of the Brontë family now a centre for tourist cafés and souvenir shops.

On a Sunday the Brontë Parsonage Museum is too full to leave much room for atmosphere but we have an excellent lunch round the corner at the Weavers Restaurant.

On the coach Keith leads us in a final chorus of "W'iv 'ad a reet gud time." Well we have. Sithee.

GETTING THERE:
The Coach Tourism Council (0870 850 2839/findacoachholiday.com) has links to more than 100 coach tour operators, many offering short breaks to Yorkshire. Skipton's Rendezvous Hotel (01756 700100/rendezvous-skipton.co.uk) offers doubles from £60 per night (two sharing), B&B.

Shearings Holidays (0844 824 6351/shearings.com) offers a four-night Yorkshire tour including the Yorkshire Railways (Kirklees and Embsay), Harrogate, Bolton Abbey and Holmfirth from £254pp (two sharing), half board.
Includes pick up points across the UK.

Welcome to Yorkshire: 0113 322 3500/yorkshire.com