East Heslerton

With so little accommodation in East Heslerton itself, hotels here mean a short drive to somewhere with more choice. The Dawnay Arms in the village combines a traditional pub with a handful of guest rooms, and is the only option actually within East Heslerton, useful for a simple overnight stop right on the A64 between York and Scarborough.

For a proper choice of hotels, Malton is the obvious base, only around 8 miles west. Yorkshire's self-styled food capital has a growing reputation to match its restaurants, with a range of inns, boutique hotels and coach-house conversions in and around the town, many geared towards visitors who have come for the Saturday food market and the artisan producers of Talbot Yard. Staying in Malton also puts you within easy striking distance of Castle Howard, the North York Moors and the Howardian Hills, as well as the Wolds themselves.

Scarborough, around 16 miles east along the A64, offers the other obvious option: a full seaside-town range of hotels, guesthouses and self-catering apartments, from Victorian townhouses on the South Cliff to modern harbourside options, useful if you want to pair a Wolds walking trip with a day or two on the coast.

Wherever you base yourself, East Heslerton works best as a stop on a wider Wolds and Vale of Pickering itinerary rather than a self-contained hotel destination — book in Malton or Scarborough and treat the village as a scenic detour and a good pub lunch.

East Heslerton is small and unashamedly rural, so its attractions are the kind you find on foot rather than queue for. It rewards a slow visit and makes a good base for exploring the wider Wolds and Vale of Pickering.

• St Andrew's Church — a striking Victorian church built in 1877 to a design by the noted architect George Edmund Street, paid for by Sir Tatton Sykes of Sledmere. Declared redundant in 2002, it is now cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust and survives virtually unaltered, with its original fittings intact. It stands right on the village street and is open to visitors.
• Yorkshire Wolds Way — the long-distance National Trail passes about a mile south of the village as it climbs from the Vale of Pickering into the Wolds. Walkers can pick up circular routes from East Heslerton onto the escarpment for sweeping views back across the vale towards the North York Moors.
• Deserted medieval village at Manor Farm — earthworks of a shrunken settlement lie near Manor Farm at East Heslerton, evidence of a once-larger medieval community, and are accessible to visitors year-round.
• East Heslerton hill barrows — a group of Neolithic and Bronze Age burial mounds sit on the hilltop above the village, part of the dense prehistoric archaeology that runs the length of the Wolds escarpment.
• West Heslerton Anglo-Saxon site — a short walk or drive away, the neighbouring village was the site of major excavations revealing an extensive early medieval settlement and cemetery, among the most important of their kind found in England.
• Sledmere House — the Sykes family's grand 18th-century estate, with its Capability Brown-style parkland and walled gardens, lies within easy reach to the south and makes a natural day out from the village.

The village's main option is the Dawnay Arms, a traditional pub and small hotel on the main road that serves classic pub food, including a popular Sunday lunch. For a wider choice, Malton is genuinely worth the short drive: it has been dubbed Yorkshire's food capital, home to Talbot Yard's cluster of independent bakers, brewers, a gelateria and a coffee roastery, plus a lively Saturday food market on Yorkersgate and Market Place with dozens of stalls selling local produce. Neighbouring Sherburn also has a handful of takeaway and pub options for anyone exploring the Wolds foothills.

England has no general right to wild camp, and that applies as much to the gentle chalk hills around East Heslerton as anywhere else: pitching a tent on the Wolds or in the Vale of Pickering without the landowner's permission is trespass, so camping here means using a proper site rather than finding a quiet field. The good news is that the wider area, straddling the boundary between the Yorkshire Wolds and the Vale of Pickering, is well suited to it — the terrain around East Heslerton itself is a mix of flat, fertile vale farmland to the north and steadily rising chalk downland to the south, giving campers based nearby a choice of gentle valley walking or a proper climb onto the escarpment for wide views back over the vale towards the North York Moors.

Campsites tend to cluster in the villages around East Heslerton rather than in the village itself, typically small, family-run touring and camping fields attached to farms, offering the kind of no-frills rural pitch that suits the area's quiet, agricultural character. Glamping has also taken hold across the Wolds in recent years, with shepherd's huts, pods and safari tents offering a more comfortable way to experience the same landscape without pitching your own tent, useful if the Yorkshire weather turns.

The best camping season here runs from late spring to early autumn. May and June bring long evenings and the Wolds hedgerows and verges into flower; July and August are warmest and busiest, coinciding with the ripening arable fields that give the vale its golden late-summer colour; September often delivers some of the most settled, midge-free weather of the year. Outside these months the chalk uplands can be cold, wet and exposed, and the clay soils of the vale below turn heavy underfoot, so most sites operate on a seasonal basis. Whenever you visit, always book ahead, confirm what facilities are provided, and check access — Wolds farm tracks are not always suited to low-clearance vehicles or large caravans.