There is a Christmas feel to the last programme in the present series. Luke Casey pays a visit to farmer's wife Yvonne Peirson in the North Yorkshire village of Kirkby Fleetham. Every so often she throws open her farmhouse kitchen for cookery demonstrations, as well as running a part-time restaurant, which has received rave reviews for the quality of its food. Yvonne will be showing Luke the finer points of preparing a typical Yorkshire Christmas dinner, complete with a pork pie as you've never seen it made.

After a glass or two of mulled wine, Luke heads out of the Dales for once, to chat to Geoffrey Morton at his farm near Market Weighton, in the East Riding. Geoffrey and his son Mark farm their 138 acres using 26 heavy horses for working the land - a hark back to a scene that has entirely disappeared from the Dales themselves over the last 30 years. Staying in the past, Luke journeys west for a trip to the quintessential Dales village - Langthwaite in Arkengarthdale. Time has stood still in this stunningly beautiful village, and every Tuesday afternoon a group of villagers get together for a 'proddy mat'-making session in the village hall, to raise funds for the local church. It's a chance for a laugh and a gossip, as well as a way of keeping alive a dying craft.

Finally we head east into the North York Moors to unravel a mystery. In the last series, the Dales Diary team stumbled across an abandoned farm at the head of Farndale. Like the Marie Celeste, it had apparently been abandoned without reason; all the farm implements, tractors and bicycles were quietly rusting away. But a return visit shows that somebody has decided to do something, and a trip across the valley to Peter and Kath Wright's goat farm turns up the answer, as well as an insight into two of the most resourceful characters living in the Dales.