Pickering

Pickering station is at the foot of Park Street, two minutes from Market Place. An all-line day rover is around £40 for an adult, more for the through service to Whitby. Sit on the right heading north for Newtondale. Goathland, an hour up, is the Heartbeat and Hogsmeade village and rammed in August.

St Peter and St Paul stands above Market Place up a flight of steps. Its fifteenth-century wall paintings — St George, the martyrdom of Thomas Becket, the Passion sequence — were whitewashed at the Reformation and uncovered in 1852. Free, open most daylight hours, and comfortably the best thing in Pickering that nobody queues for.

Up Castlegate behind the church, five minutes from the square. A Norman motte-and-bailey with curtain walls and a shell keep, run by English Heritage at around £8 adult. Climb the motte for the view over the pantile roofs and the moors edge. Usually open April to October and weekends outside that — check before a winter trip.

A Regency house by the beck at the bottom of Bridge Street, stuffed with 27 rooms of rural life — a village shop, a cobbler, a barber and the Sydney Smith photographic collection of Ryedale between the wars. Around £7, open roughly February to December, and worth ninety minutes on a wet afternoon.

Fifteen minutes east via Thornton-le-Dale on the forest drive, with a toll of about £10 a car for the day. Green, blue and red graded mountain bike trails, cycle hire at the visitor centre, and the Wildwood and Adderstone play areas for children. Get in before 11am on a summer Sunday or queue at the toll barrier.

Two and a half miles east on the A170, with the beck running along the main street and Beck Isle Cottage — the most photographed thatched cottage in Yorkshire — by the bridge. There is a good butcher, a chocolate shop and a tea room. Walk it from Pickering on the field path in about fifty minutes.

There is no national rail station: the nearest is Malton, nine miles south, on the York to Scarborough line — 25 minutes from York, then a 20-minute bus or a £22 taxi. The better arrival is Coastliner from Leeds and York, services 840 and 843, running via Tadcaster, York and Malton into Pickering Market Place roughly hourly, with one branch continuing over the moors to Whitby and the other to Scarborough. York to Pickering takes about 75 minutes and a day ticket is decent value. Locally, the 128 links Helmsley, Pickering and Scarborough. In town, everything is walkable; for Dalby, Rosedale or Hutton-le-Hole you need a car, as evening and Sunday buses on the moor roads are minimal to nonexistent.

Yes, on most days in the main season the NYMR runs through services from Pickering to Whitby over Network Rail metals from Grosmont. It takes roughly two hours each way and costs more than the standard rover, so check the timetable and book the return leg in advance. Off-peak months the through service is reduced or replaced by a change at Grosmont.

Pickering is cheaper by £25 to £40 a night, has the steam railway and better access to Dalby Forest, the coast and Rosedale. Helmsley is prettier, has far better restaurants and puts you next to Rievaulx and Sutton Bank. If you are driving and watching the budget, Pickering. If dinner matters more than the daytime, Helmsley.

Beck Isle Museum will take ninety minutes, the parish church wall paintings another thirty, and the NYMR runs whatever the weather with warm carriages. Beyond that, Malton is 20 minutes away for its food halls and Eden Camp, and Scarborough is 45 minutes for the Rotunda and the indoor pool. Pickering itself has limited wet-weather capacity for a full day.

Market Place and the station area are busy from around 10am to 4pm through July and August, and parking on the square fills first. The pressure points are NYMR gala weekends, the traction engine rally in August and the 1940s wartime weekend in October, when the town is effectively full. Outside those, an early start puts you ahead of almost everyone.