Last century, York was a chocolate manufacturing powerhouse. Kit Kat, Yorkie, Smarties, After Eights, Aero, Chocolate Orange and others were invented here. They and other brands (Polo, All Gold, etc) were made in their millions in the Rowntree factory on Haxby Road, and the Terry factory on the Knavesmire. At its mid-twentieth century peak, the industry employed a quarter of York’s population.
But global business has no sentiment. There were takeovers, workforce efficiencies, and production lines moved abroad. Most of those familiar chocs are now made in Hamburg or Wroclaw or places you’ve never heard of in countries that never make it to the World Cup finals. Kit Kat and Aero are still turned out, in the Nestlé factory next door to the old Rowntree site, but supplying a fraction of the jobs they used to. You don’t see queues of bicycles outside its factory every rush hour. Only gridlocked traffic, and drivers moaning that if only there wasn’t so much traffic, there’d be space for more cars.
But the chocolate industry shaped York in many ways that remain today: parks, workers’ villages, factories repurposed as chic apartment living, railways become bike paths. And today I cycled my own York Chocolate Trail: a two-wheeled counterpart to the (uncyclable) walking trail encoded on a leaflet you can get from Tourist Info. (The walking trail is available on pdf.)
This 15- to 20-mile cycling trail starts and finishes at the Minster. It’s flat, mostly car-free, and visits some fine sights related to the choc history. And, importantly, it gives plenty of cafe opportunities for cyclist refreshment with a hot chocolate, cocoa-based desserts, or familiar shop-bought confectionery. Here’s the route I took today…
→ See full size, expandable map of route (opens in separate window)
A York Minster
Chocolate arrived in England in the 1500s from the New World, not long after the Minster was finally completed. (Work started in about 1230 and finished in 1472.) Like coffee or tea, chocolate was a drink… until confectioners Fry worked out how to make it into solid, sweet bars in the 1800s. If you’re a resident or a genuine worshipper, you can enter the Minster for free to give thanks for this heavenly gift.
From here it’s up Deangate, dodging the Instagrammers, through Monk Bar, and through the bike-friendly streets of the Groves to Lowther St and…
B Chocolate & Co
You can get hot chocolate in about five million cafes in York, but none better than this. (We approve: Chocolate & Co also do sterling work assisting people into the workplace. A stance the socially-minded Rowntrees would surely support.)
Select your strength and type of cocoa from seven types (white? dark? 42%? 60%? 100%? ) then your style (straight? cream? spiced? iced? extreme? ). On a cold morning this is the ideal way to start your bike trip. Though you may end up deciding to just stay here all day.
Resist. Head through the Groves to join the Foss Islands bike path, and admire the…
C Old Railway Halt
Until 1988 this was a local rail line, with a halt for workers at the Rowntree factory. (See a BFI film of it in use.) Now it’s a decent bike path that links Clifton with the city centre, the Way of the Roses, and the rest of the world, wherever that is.
Go north. The Cocoa Works housing development on the right is on the site of that old factory (we’ll come back here soon). Shortly beyond is the bland shape of the…
D Nestlé Factory
Nestlé took over Rowntree late last century, and built this more efficient but rather soulless plant. Kit Kat and Aero, among others, are still produced here, so maybe have a break. If the wind is in the wrong direction we get all the choc-factory smells in our house, which is much less enticing than you might imagine.
Keep heading north, on the bike path through the stray, to the…
E Folk Hall, New Earswick
New Earswick was the workers’ village built by the Rowntree family. Being Quakers, they believed a business had a duty to invest some of its profits into society, for the greater good. Industrialists nowadays have a more nuanced approach, ie a business has a duty to run at a paper loss to avoid tax while cutting jobs and taking every cent possible out for shareholders before selling out to venture capitalists who will asset-strip it.
The village houses were modest but comfortable. Each road, grove or avenue is named after a tree – Rose, Almond, Crab Apple, Rowan etc – and was planted with those very trees, making arboreal identification a simple matter of reading the sign.
The Folk Hall is a super community venue, run by the Joseph Rowntree Housing Trust. It’s a wonderful place to eat – inexpensive, excellent quality, allergy-friendly etc. A splendid option for lunch if your cycling progress is as fast, ie slow, as mine. There’s also a post office and library – and, sometimes, evening events with something that Joe wouldn’t have been too happy with: alcohol. New Earswick is otherwise dry. There are no pubs here. But then the Rowntrees were fans of chocolate mainly because it offered a safer alternative to the demon drink.
Retrace your route back through the stray, past the hopefully non-smelly Nestlé factory, and turn left into the…
F Cocoa Works housing development
Nice flats, I was assured by a friendly dog-walking couple who live there. They didn’t talk about any problems of driving in or out, given the frequently glued-up traffic on Wiggington Road. It reminded me that in the 1920s car boom, Rowntree’s produced ‘Mr York’s Motoring Chocolate’, to enjoy at the wheel.
Not a good idea now, of course. You’re driving, and should be concentrating on other things than eating chocolate. Things such as texting, watching TikTok on your phone, programming the satnav to get you out of this jam, and complaining that all those cyclists are just blithely riding past you.
Pick your way through the access roads towards the big old factory building that is now repurposed as flats.
Round the other side is Cavo, a swish, light and airy cafe that does hot choc among several other options.
Next to it, by the road, is a library whose atrium is open to the public. There’s a few panels with choc-relevant information about the site’s history, and a display of historic chocolate bars.
Rejoin the Foss Islands route, heading the other way this time. At Foss Island retail park (Lidl, Morrisons, Waitrose, if you need a quick fix with a bar of something) you come off and nose through side streets, over the Foss on a clanky bridge, up the back lane of Aldwark, and up Stonebow to…
G Pizza Hut
You’re not here for the cheap and cheerless pizzas, of course. This building, at 28 Pavement, used to be Rowntree’s main shop, as a blue plaque in the doorway explains.
Enough of Rowntree for now! We’re heading down to the river and trundling south along the east bank, over the…
H Millennium Bridge
A glorious transport and social space. And a good spot to relax, perhaps with a bar of chocolate, and watch the world go by on two wheels or two feet. (Other numbers are available.) If the ice cream boat is there, some chocolate ice cream could be on the cards. And on your chin.
Cross the bridge and turn left, following the bike path to…
I Terry’s
The old factory where Chocolate Orange Trees were grown is now apartments which seem, as far as we could tell, to be owned by foreign investors.
The landmark clock is still there, saying RY☼KR☼OY☼TER instead of 1 to 12, clearly some kind of mystic code. The Old Liquor Store is an upscale restaurant-cafe-bar, if you’re feeling flush, but otherwise there’s not much to see.
From the roadside path, turn right into the…
J Knavesmire
Follow the bike path for a short while to get a fine view of Terry’s clock and neo-Georgian old factory. Then go through the racecourse buildings to get inside the racetrack.
York’s racecourse is unusual in that you can cycle right round its inside. The smooth, wide, tarmac, publicly-accessible, car-free, two-mile circuit makes a sort of unofficial cycling track. (Pontefract’s racecourse is also cyclable, but not as comfortably.)
Go round as many times as you like, from zero to infinity, but slip off sideways on the west side to…
K Goddards
This was the Terry family home, now a National Trust property. You used to be able to visit the house, even play table tennis on the kids’ table. These days however only the gardens are accessible.
Return to the Knavesmire, head back to Bishopthorpe Rd, and come off it to glimpse the Millennium Bridge again but turning off left into…
L Rowntree Park
A gift of those socially-minded Rowntrees to the people of York in the 1930s. The park is an inclusive delight whatever the weather, and has a superb cafe with indoor and outdoor balcony tables that overlook the grand gardens. Mind the goose poo, though.
It’s not just a cafe, but a library too, and a de facto nursery often enliveningly full of young mums with toddlers.
We’re nearly done. Roll back through the park and north along Terry Avenue (yes, Rowntree Park, but Terry Avenue) to turn right over Lendal Bridge and almost back to the Minster. But just before you get there, take a two-minute walk right along the pedestrianised Blake Street to…
M Pink
An ‘impossible one-of-a-kind hideaway’ with an, er, pink theme. I think it’s a bar or something. Anyway, it does luxury hot chocolate. Which is appropriate, because this was originally Terry’s main shop in the city. Indeed, you can still see the name TERRY carved in the honey-coloured stone.
Walk back to the road you just left, and turn right to get back to the Minster where you started. I hope you enjoy the York Chocolate Trail as much as I did. Which was a lot.
MAP