Northallerton

Stalls run down the centre of the broad High Street from about 8am to 3pm, with produce, plants, cheese, fabric and clothing. Saturday is the bigger day. Combine it with the covered Applegarth market area behind, and pick up lunch from one of the bakery stalls rather than the chains at the south end.

The smallest and least frantic of the Bettys branches, in a Georgian building at the north end of the High Street. Open from around 9am to 5.30pm daily. Expect £6 to £9 for cake and a pot of tea, and a queue of twenty minutes on a Saturday. Fat rascals to take away from the shop counter avoid the wait.

Seven miles north off the A19 near Osmotherley. The best-preserved Carthusian charterhouse in Britain, with a reconstructed monk's cell and garden showing exactly how a hermit-monk lived. English Heritage and National Trust jointly, roughly £10, with woodland walks and famously bold nuthatches at the feeders.

At 92 High Street, a family grocer and delicatessen trading since 1899, with a hamper business, a cheese counter and a first-floor tea room. Worth twenty minutes for the Yorkshire produce shelves alone. Open through the working day, closed Sundays outside the Christmas run-up.

Six miles east, a stone village with a market cross, three pubs and the Lady Chapel above it. The Cleveland Way passes through and the Lyke Wake Walk starts here. Cod Beck Reservoir, a mile up the moor road, has parking and a level circuit — the easiest genuine moorland walk from Northallerton.

Behind the Applegarth, the Victorian jail that closed in 2013 has been redeveloped into Treadmills, with a food hall, independents and event space, plus surviving prison walls and gateway. It is the one part of central Northallerton that feels new. Opening hours vary by unit, with most trading daytime and into the early evening.

Northallerton station is on the East Coast Main Line, five to seven minutes' walk east of the High Street: LNER services reach London King's Cross in about two and a half hours, Edinburgh in roughly two hours twenty, York in 25 minutes and Darlington in 12, with TransPennine and Northern services on the branch east to Middlesbrough in around 35 minutes. Buses radiate from the High Street stops — the 70 to Thirsk and Ripon, services west to Bedale and Leyburn on the Dales road, and the 80 group north to Darlington. Driving, the A684 west and A19 north-south make this one of the easiest towns in the county to reach. Central parking at the Applegarth and Forum sites costs a couple of pounds for several hours, and the town centre needs nothing but feet.

It is the best compromise in this file. Leyburn and Wensleydale are about 40 minutes west on the A684, and Osmotherley on the Cleveland Way is 15 to 20 minutes east. Neither park is on the doorstep, but nowhere else gives you both within easy reach at £65 to £100 a night with a mainline station.

Honestly, half a day is enough: the market on a Wednesday or Saturday, All Saints' Church, Lewis & Cooper, Bettys and the Treadmills prison site. The town's value is as a base rather than a destination. Save your sightseeing time for Mount Grace Priory seven miles north, or the trains to York and Durham.

York takes about 25 minutes with several fast services an hour, and London King's Cross about two hours 25 minutes on a through LNER train. Advance fares to London booked a few weeks out can be dramatically cheaper than walk-up prices. The station is a seven-minute walk from the High Street, with a taxi rank outside.

Yes, unusually so for a county town. The Applegarth and Forum car parks sit right behind the High Street and cost a couple of pounds for several hours, with longer stays still cheap. High Street bays are short-stay and busy on market days. If you are arriving on a Wednesday or Saturday morning, use the Applegarth and expect the top of town to be closed to traffic.