Three years ago, traffic cop Les Moorhouse was patrolling the congested streets and roads in the Toller area of Bradford as a police constable with West Yorkshire Police's road traffic division.

His backdrop was factories and terraced streets, with just the occasional glimpse of greenery above the cluttered rooftops.

His day was one long, stressful thrash dealing with quick response calls from colleagues, violent domestic incidents, fights at pub closing time, and chasing car thieves.

There was no time to stop and chat, to cultivate community links and get to know the people on his patch. He enjoyed his job and worked in Toller for more than five years and has fond memories of his time there.

After all, it was where he met his future wife, Angela, who was a car beat bobby on the same patch.

But today their working environment couldn't be more different.

Les and Angela are two of 32 police officers who sought transfers from metropolitan forces to the rural idyll of North Yorkshire.

Police bosses call it the Heartbeat factor.

Not that the couple sought transfer because they were fans of the popular ITV police series set in the 1960s.

They were already familiar with the magnificence of the Yorkshire Dales, having escaped to the fells for walking trips on their days off when they worked in Bradford.

And when an advert appeared in the police magazine seeking officers who wished to transfer to North Yorkshire, they jumped at the chance.

Their home then was in Bingley - now they live in the heart of the Craven Dales.

Angela, 29, who joined West Yorkshire Police in 1994, recalls: "We both applied and I was first requested to go through the assessment. I got in and a few weeks later Les went through the same system and he was offered a place. We were delighted."

Angela, a constable, works for Skipton CID and 32-year-old Les, a traffic constable, is based in Skipton.

The cultural changes were immense.

"In Bradford there were 20 officers on a shift. When I arrived at Ingleton, where I was first posted, there were just two," said Angela.

Even in Settle, where Les was initially sent, manpower-numbers were not much bigger with just eight manning the station.

Les joined road traffic in Toller in 1992, working the beat until 1997. In a given day he would cover about 50 to 60 miles in a relatively compact area.

Today, his patch covers literally hundreds of square miles and one day he can find himself patrolling the panoramic fells of Upper Wharfedale and the next on a busy stretch of the A1 in the east of the county.

"It's fantastic. There is a different landscape every day because I can be 50 miles away from the place I had been the previous day.

"The cultural changes are immense. It's a totally different society than the place I police now.

"But it was just the right place to learn all about policing. You can't get a better grounding and if you can work there, you can work anywhere," said Les.