The wonderful Wolds are Yorkshire’s last great secret – David Behrens

Only one person was not pleased with this week’s news that we had been placed under starter’s orders for our collective great escape, and that was the poor old Countess of Carnarvon.
The unique landscape of the Wolds around Thixendale, East Yorkshire. 
Picture: James Hardisty.The unique landscape of the Wolds around Thixendale, East Yorkshire. 
Picture: James Hardisty.
The unique landscape of the Wolds around Thixendale, East Yorkshire. Picture: James Hardisty.

Why, she wondered on Radio 4, could Highclere Castle in Berkshire, which she owns, not let in visitors until May 17, when holiday cottages, theme parks and shopping centres could do so five weeks earlier? What was the difference, so far as spreading disease was concerned?

Her impatience was mirrored many times over on Monday evening, as small droplets of hope fell from the Prime Minister’s lips. Would-be holidaymakers hammered away at their keyboards like berserk woodpeckers in order to nab the best sunbeds on which to place their proverbial towels. In Yorkshire, B&Bs were said to be struggling to keep pace with the demand.

At last, optimism had returned.

A farmer ploughs a field during the early evening sun on The Wolds near Huggate, East Yorkshire. 
Picture: James Hardisty.A farmer ploughs a field during the early evening sun on The Wolds near Huggate, East Yorkshire. 
Picture: James Hardisty.
A farmer ploughs a field during the early evening sun on The Wolds near Huggate, East Yorkshire. Picture: James Hardisty.
Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Highclere will not be short of visitors when it does reopen because it was one of the locations for Downton Abbey – a series supposedly set in Yorkshire. How it was chosen is one of life’s mysteries; it’s certainly the first time the flat scenery of the Home Counties has been mistaken for Thirsk.

But the rush to book rooms will inevitably mean that the most popular destinations will fill up quickly. There will be little slack for last-minute travellers like me to take up.

In Yorkshire, the hotspots are likely to be the coastal resorts and the two National Parks, as well as York and the pockets that have been designated areas of outstanding natural beauty, or AONBs in government jargon. There are two of these substantially in the North and West Ridings – Nidderdale and the Howardian Hills – and two more on the fringes, yet none in the east of the county.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

That makes the East Riding a relative backwater, but it was not always so. Filey, where Butlin’s had a holiday camp, was its summer capital and, as a boy, I longed to go there. The newspaper adverts made it look like a veritable Disneyland on our doorstep and eventually our dad agreed to take my brother, sister and me. He’d had misgivings that the chalets would be like his RAF barracks during the war: in fact, as he never tired of telling us, they were much worse.

Those huts have long been bulldozed and in their place have risen modern caravan sites. In the intervening years, Filey itself has been moved out of the East Riding. But with the news that councillors are campaigning to get the Yorkshire Wolds added to the list of AONBs, the tourism tide may be about to turn eastwards. It would be a travesty if it did not. This gentle landscape of chalk hills and valleys, curving from the coast at Flamborough westwards towards Sledmere and then south to the Humber, is one of the most beautiful parts of the whole county.

The Wolds are also Yorkshire’s last great secret. At certain times of the year, you can walk entire stretches of the long distance footpath known as the Wolds Way without seeing a single soul. Only when you pause for refreshment at one of the picture-book villages along the way will you encounter fellow last-minute travellers. It was social distancing before anyone had a name for it.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

It was at one such village – Warter, between Pocklington and Driffield – that I pitched up a few years ago with my then teenaged son. It may have been the row of immaculate thatched cottages flanking the village green that took his breath away, or perhaps the shattering silence that you find only in the deepest of rural settings. Either way, he said, he had not realised such places existed outside fiction.

David Hockney was similarly inspired. He visited Warter around the same time as me and sold his resulting landscape for somewhere in excess of £8m. I took some rather good photographs of the same view but no-one has paid me so much as the price of a cheese sandwich to see them.

Many visitors have been drawn to the Wolds in Hockney’s wake, but it will be an AONB designation that will place them properly on the official tourism map. In the meantime, when the better-known spots in the Dales have put up the No Vacancies signs, this might be an ideal summer to see them as only the locals have done – before they are declared “trendy”. For within these restful hills lie the very essence of rural Yorkshire – and that’s more than can be said for Highclere Castle.

Hide Ad
Hide Ad

Support The Yorkshire Post and become a subscriber today. Your subscription will help us to continue to bring quality news to the people of Yorkshire. In return, you’ll see fewer ads on site, get free access to our app and receive exclusive members-only offers. Click here to subscribe.

Comment Guidelines

National World encourages reader discussion on our stories. User feedback, insights and back-and-forth exchanges add a rich layer of context to reporting. Please review our Community Guidelines before commenting.