Easingwold

The cobbled Market Place, with its stone market cross and Georgian frontages, hosts the town's weekly market — produce, plants, cheese, fabric and the usual bric-a-brac. Morning is when it is worth seeing; stalls pack up by mid-afternoon. The bakers and butchers on Long Street trade all week and are better than the town's size suggests.

Six miles north-east in Coxwold, the medieval house where Laurence Sterne wrote Tristram Shandy is now a museum with a first-edition collection and two remarkable gardens. Interior opening is limited to a couple of afternoons a week from roughly May to September; the gardens open more often. Check before you drive over.

Crayke sits on a lone hill two and a half miles east, with a Norman-founded castle in private hands, a fine hilltop church, and a view that reaches York Minster on a clear day. The Durham Ox on Westway does the best pub lunch within ten miles. Field paths lead there from Uppleby.

Twenty minutes north on the A170, the escarpment climbs 1-in-4 to the National Park visitor centre and what James Herriot called the finest view in England, over Lake Gormire and the Vale of York. Park at the centre, walk north along the cliff edge, then loop to the White Horse of Kilburn cut into the slope below.

Twelve minutes' drive at Byland, near Coxwold: a huge Cistercian ruin whose broken west front rose window inspired the great east window at York Minster. English Heritage, modest entry, seasonal opening. The green-glazed floor tiles are the best surviving medieval tile pavement in the country, and the site is rarely busy.

Easingwold Golf Club on Stillington Road, a mile out of town, is an eighteen-hole parkland course on sandy soil that drains well in winter, with green fees at the sensible end for North Yorkshire. Visitors are welcome most days with a booking. It is a good rain contingency when Sutton Bank is in cloud.

Easingwold has had no railway since the private branch line to Alne closed in the 1950s, so you arrive by road or bus. From York it is twenty-five minutes up the A19; from the A1(M) come off at Dishforth and cross on the A168 and A19, about twenty minutes. The nearest stations are York, thirteen miles south, and Thirsk, twelve miles north-west, both on the East Coast Main Line. The 31 bus links Market Place with York and, in the other direction, Helmsley, running roughly hourly Monday to Saturday with nothing useful late in the evening and a much reduced Sunday service. Parking on and around Market Place is free with time limits, which makes day-tripping from here painless.

It is a good southern base. Sutton Bank is twenty minutes, Helmsley twenty-five and the Hole of Horcum about fifty, so the western and southern moors are comfortable day trips. For Whitby, Robin Hood's Bay or the Esk Valley you are looking at an hour and a quarter each way — better to sleep closer for those.

Yes. The 31 bus runs from Market Place into York roughly hourly on weekdays and takes around fifty minutes, dropping you within walking distance of the Minster. The catch is the evening — the last useful bus back leaves well before York's restaurants finish, so budget for a taxi if you want dinner in the city.

There is a weekly market on the cobbled Market Place, best visited in the morning when everything is set up; stalls start packing away by early afternoon. Farmers' and craft markets appear at intervals through the year, and the town's own shops on Long Street and Market Place trade six days a week regardless.

In town, the coaching inns on Market Place do reliable pub food with kitchens usually closing around 8.30 or 9. For something better, drive out: the Durham Ox at Crayke is two and a half miles east and the pubs at Coxwold, Brandsby and Stillington are all within ten minutes. Book at weekends, they fill.