TIME TO THINK ABOUT YOUR NEXT HOLIDAY
A Yorkshire market town break offers endless delights for GRAHAM YOUNG and family
STEPPING straight from the shower ready for our interview, Adam Faith appeared in a snow-white towelling robe at his hotel bedroom door.
“You can always tell the quality of a place by its towels,” grinned the Love Hurts star.
More than 20 years on I’ve never forgotten that advice. It came straight to mind when we stayed at two different places in Helmsley, a market town with a population of just 1,550 on the southern edge of the extraordinary North York Moors National Park.
Our first night was spent tucked away inside The Feversham Arms Hotel next to the Church of All Saints.
The spa destination specialises in pampering guests eager to escape the modern world.
Whether you want beauty treatments, a hot tub, steam vapour room, monsoon shower, foot spa or an outdoor swim – or just to lounge beside the pool – there’s something for everyone.
And if that doesn’t sound luxurious enough, then the towelling robes are proof of Faith’s enduring wisdom.
After a remarkably quiet night in our room, which had direct access to the pool behind, breakfast was fabulous, too, from my wife’s full English to the salmon and scrambled egg I opted for in a dining room which gently diffuses the morning daylight.
The hotel is just two minutes’ walk from Helmsley’s delightful village centre which has its own 900-yearold castle run by English Heritage.
Over at Honeysuckle Cottage, 24 Bridge Street, the bathroom towels again validated our choice of a two-night stay.
Perfect for romantics or families with two children, the stone cottage with exposed beams might be on a main road but we couldn’t hear a thing from our upstairs front bedroom.
Equipped with lovely lounge furniture, a fine kitchen with dishwasher and washing machine, free wi-fi and even board games, it also has a delightful south-facing rear garden from where you can watch the sun set in the west.
And get this. Honeysuckle is 10 seconds’ walk away from the local butcher and barely 30 seconds walk from the Helmsley Brewing Company, a microbrewery with bar at 18 Bridge Street complete with £3-a-pint taps of golden goodness. Oh, happy days!
Within two minutes’ walk is a traditional pub, several cafés, an award-winning deli and restaurants catering for lovers of Italian and Indian food – or good old fish and chips.
There’s also a couple of small supermarkets should you have forgotten anything such as toothpaste or fancy making your own meals at night or breakfast.
But the real beauty of holidaying here is that there is so much else to see and do.
Taking advice from another celebrity, we followed York-born actress Judi Dench’s guidebook tip to see her favourite childhood part of Yorkshire – the Hole of Horcum, just 20 miles towards Whitby on the A169.
Resembling a giant’s amphitheatre, this geological marvel is a mile across and several hundred feet deep and, by all accounts, still growing.
The purple heather is at its majestic, spectacular peak in mid-August – something which tempts many a walker to follow its paths for miles.
We enjoyed an hour in the open air before returning to the car park where I asked a volunteer guide if she had any tips for finding the best fish and chips in Whitby.
“There’s so much competition, they’re all good,” she said.
Arriving in the coastal town half an hour later, we instantly discovered Hadleys Fish Restaurant and enjoyed an irresistibly delicious meal in a chippy founded 80 years ago in 1937.
Even without rushing anywhere, we packed so much else into our trip it felt as if we’d enjoyed a week-long holiday, from paddling in the Whitby sea (35 miles from Helmsley), to visiting the nearby clifftop ruins of the 7th Century Whitby Abbey that inspired Bram Stoker’s Dracula.
English Heritage also oversees the even more incredible ruins of the Cistercian Rievaulx Abbey just three miles from Helmsley itself. What were people ‘on’ in the 12th century to create something that is still so jaw-dropping today?
Our final day out was equally memorable.
We began by watching flying displays at the family-friendly National Birds of Prey Centre just around the corner from Honeysuckle Cottage, in the heart of the 300-acre Duncombe Park estate.
We then drove the 13 miles to the 18th century Castle Howard stately home where Brideshead Revisited was filmed and where the rebuilt dome is so impossibly beautiful it drops your jaw to the floor.
Just like Yorkshire, in fact.