Thornton-le-Dale

The Beck and the Postcard View

The bend where Thornton Beck curves past Beck Isle Cottage is the village's defining view, reproduced on postcards, calendars, jigsaws, biscuit tins and chocolate boxes, and the painter Gordon Lees returned to it again and again. The cottage itself is 17th-century and cruck-framed, three pairs of full crucks still standing inside it, with a spice-cupboard door carved in a border of lozenges and rosettes. It is easy to miss the crucks, looking at the water and the flowers instead.

The beck runs through the whole village, under a series of small stone bridges, past a duck pond and a triangular green and cottages set close together. Gardens and flowers spill over the low walls.

Pubs, Pies and a Weekly Menu

There are two pubs in the centre. The Buck Inn does home-cooked food, keeps a log burner going and is known for its pies and changing specials; head chef Mike cooks, Chris and Zoe host, and the bar and lounge take dogs. There is a large beer garden, a pool table, darts, and three letting rooms if you want to stay the night. The ales are Yorkshire cask and Cask Marque accredited. The New Inn, a Georgian coaching house with low beams and a former stable yard at the back, has served meat pies, sirloin and fish and chips, with lemon cheesecake and sticky toffee pudding to follow. One recent visitor, Mark Campbell, summed it up as "good food, good beer and a friendly, down to earth atmosphere."

For something more considered, Brandysnap Bistro occupies a Grade II cottage from the 1760s. Adam and chef Claire took it on in 2003, and much of the fish arrives from Whitby and Scarborough. The menu changes weekly but has run to duck rillettes with fig-and-pear chutney, hake with asparagus-and-pea risotto, beef daube braised in Wolds ale, and a mushroom, squash and chestnut Wellington. Claire makes the ice creams herself, including blackcurrant-and-liquorice and prune-and-Armagnac.

Village Treats and the Way to Ellerburn

Balderson's Welcome Café has been a family business since 1895. The ice cream, made on the premises by an independent local manufacturer, has picked up national awards. The Chocolate Factory works out of The Forge on The Square, turning out handmade chocolates and novelty figures. For everything else there is Wardill Bros, a general store and newsagent the family have run since the 1850s, which also holds the Post Office and hands out walk leaflets.

The walking starts at the car park. The gentle option is the two-mile circuit to Ellerburn and back along Thornton Beck, level fields most of the way, with brown trout to be found under the bridges if you stop and look. From here the ground rises north into the Ellerburn valley and Dalby Forest, and the ambitious can pick up the White Rose Way, 104 miles from Leeds to Scarborough, which passes straight through the village.

Medieval Stone and Motoring Stories

The Church of All Saints, 14th-century and largely medieval, holds a tomb niche where a carved woman lies with a dog at her feet, thought to be Lady Beatrice Hastings. In the churchyard is the grave of Matthew Grimes, reputed to have guarded Napoleon on St Helena. Along the street stand twelve almshouses, still lived in, built from the estate Elizabeth, Viscountess Lumley, left when she died in 1657 at the age of eighty.

On Pickering Road, the Roxby Garage gift shop belongs to Mathewsons, the classic-car firm filmed for Bangers & Cash. The auctions themselves have moved to Mathewsons' nearby Pickering site, which is also where you will find a larger choice of shops; Malton, eleven miles off, has the nearest train.

Summer Music on the Green

On a summer Sunday afternoon there is music on the Green, and the ducks carry on regardless.