Harrogate: a spa town that fills with Yorkshire every July.

In Harrogate’s centre, Bettys, the Montpellier Quarter, the Royal Pump Room and the convention centre on Kings Road sit a short walk apart, and the Stray — two hundred acres of grass protected since 1778 — wraps round three sides of it. The A61 runs through on its way from Leeds to Ripon; the A59 crosses between York and Skipton. Leeds Bradford Airport is ten miles south-west, and the station has Northern trains to Leeds and York twice an hour and a direct LNER train to King’s Cross about every two hours. July is the crowded month: the Great Yorkshire Show brings four days of county visitors to the showground, the crime-writing festival packs the Old Swan, and the Home & Gift trade fair takes the convention centre.

On the north-west side of Valley Gardens, the Duchy estate is a district of large detached houses, some now divided into flats, around Duchy College, which was Harrogate Ladies’ College until September 2026. South of the Stray lie Oatlands and the lanes towards Pannal, Fulwith Mill Lane among them — named Yorkshire’s most expensive road in 2023. A good deal of the money is earned in Leeds and brought home up the A61. Through June and July 2025 two burglars went round the town trying door handles, taking car keys from inside and driving cars off the drives. In January 2026 each was jailed for five years.

Between the shows, the work here is residential: a protective survey that follows the car keys as closely as the doors — where they sit overnight, what a camera sees of the drive, whether the garage is inside the house’s security or outside it. July and the trade weeks bring movement: security drivers for show traffic, the Kings Road drop-offs, Leeds Bradford and the King’s Cross trains, and close protection for a principal working a crowded hall.