Driffield

Driffield works best as a base built around what you actually plan to do, because the town itself, the surrounding Wolds villages and the nearby coast each suit a different kind of stay. Right in the centre, pub-with-rooms accommodation and small hotels around the Market Place and railway station put you within walking distance of the Thursday market, the Driffield Navigation towpath and the town's handful of good pubs, which suits anyone arriving by train or simply wanting to leave the car behind for the evening. Rooms here are generally straightforward rather than styled, and represent solid value against national averages — expect roughly £70-£110 a night for a comfortable double, rising around Driffield Show week in mid-July when the town's limited stock is under real pressure and booking two to three weeks ahead is sensible.

Move a few miles out into the Wolds villages — around Sledmere, Nafferton, Middleton-on-the-Wolds or Wetwang — and the character changes: period farmhouse B&Bs, pub inns and estate cottages set among the chalk downland, better suited to walkers tackling stretches of the Yorkshire Wolds Way or visitors basing themselves near Sledmere House and Burton Agnes Hall. This option requires a car for pretty much everything, including dinner on quieter nights, but rewards with a genuinely rural setting that the town centre, pleasant as it is, can't quite match.

Self-catering cottages, many of them converted farm buildings or estate lets, are common throughout the wider area and offer the best option for families or groups who want space and a proper kitchen after a day out on the Wolds Way or visiting the stately homes. These need booking well ahead for summer — a month or more for peak weekends — since accommodation density here is nothing like the coast. Speaking of which, Bridlington and Hornsea, both around 20-30 minutes away, carry a far larger and more varied hotel and self-catering stock and are worth considering as a base if the coast itself, rather than the Wolds, is the main draw, with Driffield then working as an easy day trip inland.

Driffield rewards visitors who like their history unpolished and their countryside close at hand. Between the town centre, the canal and the villages scattered across the Wolds, there is a genuine week's worth of days out within a short drive.

• Driffield Navigation and River Head — walk the towpath from the restored River Head basin, past the old mills and maltings that once made the town rich, out towards Wansford and Brigham; the Driffield Navigation Trust runs occasional boat trips along the water it spent decades bringing back to life.
• All Saints Church — a Saxon foundation rebuilt in the 12th century and extended through the medieval period, with a tower that acts as a landmark across the Wolds; look for the poet William Barnes memorial and the unusually elaborate 14th-century windows.
• Driffield Market Place and the Bell Hotel — the Thursday street market still fills the centre of town, overlooked by the 18th-century Bell Hotel, whose balcony once hosted the reading of general election results for the old Buckrose constituency.
• Sledmere House — a Georgian stately home around 7 miles northwest, seat of the Sykes family for centuries, with Robert Adam-style interiors, a walled garden and parkland landscaped by Capability Brown; the Yorkshire Wolds Way passes right through the estate village.
• Burton Agnes Hall — an Elizabethan manor house around 7 miles east on the road towards Bridlington, still lived in by descendants of the family that built it in 1601, with celebrated gardens, a maze and a striking Norman manor house surviving in the grounds.
• Tophill Low Nature Reserve — Yorkshire Water's working reservoir site a few miles south of town, with hides overlooking wetlands and lagoons that draw a genuinely impressive list of migrant and resident bird species through the year.
• The Yorkshire Wolds Way — the 79-mile national trail passes within easy reach of Driffield, threading through chalk valleys and Wolds villages like Thixendale and Millington; short circular sections make for a good half-day walk without committing to the whole route.
• Kiplingcotes Derby course — around 12 miles from Driffield near Etton, this is reputedly the oldest continuously run horse race in the world, first recorded in 1519 and still raced every third Thursday in March over four miles of farm tracks; worth knowing about even outside race day for the story alone.
• Driffield Show — one of Britain's largest one-day agricultural shows, held every July on showground land just outside town, with livestock classes, show jumping and a proper flavour of the farming community that still underpins the whole area.

Driffield's food scene runs on solid, unpretentious pubs rather than destination dining, which suits the town well. The Bell Hotel on the Market Place remains the historic centrepiece, serving traditional food in a building that has anchored the town's civic life for over two centuries. The Butchers Dog is a genuinely well-regarded ale pub with a strong range of traditional beers and a relaxed, dog-friendly atmosphere, while The Crooked Tap is the newer addition, a craft beer bar with regular live music nights that has become a fixture for a younger crowd. The Mill & Vine offers a step up for a proper sit-down meal without leaving the town centre.

Down by the water, the Blue Bell Riverside restaurant makes the most of its position near the canal, and is worth booking for an evening meal with a bit more polish. For something quicker, Jack Kennedys is the well-regarded local chippy, and the Thursday street market is still the best place to pick up local produce direct from the region's farms — this remains genuinely agricultural country, and butchers, bakers and greengrocers on the Market Place trade on that connection rather than importing anything they don't need to.

Beyond the town, the wider Wolds villages hold some excellent country pubs worth the drive — the Triton Inn at Sledmere is a natural stop after visiting the House, sitting right on the estate. Combined with the produce coming off the surrounding arable and livestock farms, Driffield's food and drink identity is less about individual star names and more about a whole area that still runs on what it grows and rears.

Camping around Driffield means chalk downland rather than dramatic cliffs or mountains — rolling Wolds farmland cut by dry valleys, big open skies, and a genuine sense of rural quiet that's increasingly hard to find within striking distance of the coast. The terrain is gentle by UK standards: well-drained chalk soil that copes better with wet weather than the heavy clay of the Holderness Plain just to the east, which makes pitches around Driffield a sensible choice even after a damp spell. Several working farms in the area, including sites like Thorpe Hall within the walled kitchen gardens of a historic estate, have converted paddocks and orchards into touring and camping pitches, so many campsites here come with a genuine sense of place rather than being generic fields with hook-ups.

Wild camping is illegal in England without the landowner's explicit permission, and the Wolds are almost entirely working farmland and private estate, so pitching up off-grid on a whim isn't a realistic option here the way it might be on open moorland or in parts of Scotland. That said, the density of proper campsites around Driffield — Field House Campsite, Thorpe Hall, Greengrass Park and others within a short drive of town — means there's rarely a need to improvise; East Yorkshire's camping culture leans towards small, family-run sites on working farms rather than large commercial holiday parks, and booking ahead, even a few days out, secures a pitch without any legal grey areas.

The best camping season here runs from late spring through early autumn. May and June bring long daylight, drier ground underfoot on the Yorkshire Wolds Way, and the countryside at its greenest before harvest. July coincides with the Driffield Show, which is a genuinely good time to camp locally if the show itself is the draw, though it's worth booking sites early as the town's population swells for the weekend. September holds real appeal too — the arable land turns gold after harvest, evenings are still mild, and midweek pitches are easy to find. Winter camping is possible on a handful of all-season sites but is a minority pursuit; the exposed high ground of the Wolds can be bracingly cold and wet, and most sites reduce services or close outright between November and March.

Glamping has taken hold strongly in this part of Yorkshire, and Driffield is well served by it. Bell tents, shepherd's huts and insulated pods — some with wood-burners or private hot tubs — are dotted across farms throughout the Wolds, offering a comfortable middle ground for anyone who wants the setting without the full commitment of pitching their own tent. These sites tend to book up fastest for July and August weekends, so for glamping specifically it's worth reserving six to eight weeks ahead in peak season, considerably less urgent the rest of the year.