It may sound like a medieval church reformer, but Bishop Wilton – thanks to an article on unknown hidden-gem villages in the Sunday Times last weekend – has suddenly become East Yorkshire’s most famous secret place. So I couldn’t resist the excuse to visit it this sunny day, as part of a scenic amble round the Wolds’ beautiful dry chalk valleys.
I took the X46 bus to Pocklington, gateway to the Wolds, because conveniently this York–Hull service (and some of the X47s) offers designated bike spaces. All for £2 each way, thanks to the current flat-fare bus scheme. This is my sort of transport, and my sort of budget.
Bishop Wilton (pop. 550) sits at the western foot of the Yorkshire Wolds five miles or so north of Pocklington. The Wolds area is the shy-but-brilliant littlest child of the county’s scenery family; it tends to be overlooked next to the bigger and more outgoing Dales, Moors and Pennines, but its sinuous, compact, intimate dry valleys are a tranquil delight to cycle through.
(There’s a campaign to classify the Wolds as an Area of Outstanding National Beauty [AONB], or National Landscape as they’re now to be known.)
I’d cycled past Bishop Wilton before, but never stopped to investigate the village centre, whose main street saunters attractively along either side of a tiny stream trickling down a green corridor.
At the western end is a pub, the Fleece. It’s open weekends, and weekday evenings, so it was closed on my visit. Just as well, or I might have not got much further this relaxed day. The pub is currently up for sale; let’s hope for continuity.
The focus of the village is the Community Shop, owned and run by the village since 2020, and it’s a cracker. The cafe is well patronised by cyclists, and no wonder: plenty of cakes, tea and coffee are up for grabs at very modest prices. Casual theft is not a problem here, but the shop is hoping to install some bike racks outside for those concerned about the security of their £6k carbon bikes while they enjoy their flat whites and white-chocolate blueberry muffins.
And the shop sells everything you’d hope for in a liveable village: plenty of produce from around fifty local and regional suppliers including Bishop Wilton preserves, meat and poultry from neighbouring farms, and even their own gin. You can see why the Sunday Times was impressed. Beer’s more my thing, so I was pleased to see a range of Yorkshire brews on sale too.
I also took advantage of the free pears on offer. Again, this is my sort of budget.
David, one of the affable and engaging community shop staff, was happy to tell me why Bishop Wilton is such a pleasant place to live and visit. A sense of community, obviously, as the noticeboard suggests. (There were flyers for local netball and women’s rugby teams, choirs, craft groups, walking tours and piano lessons.)
But a big factor in Bishop Wilton’s serene appeal is that it’s off the main drag. All the other Wolds villages, David said, are on main or busy roads; Wilton is effectively on a back lane, and the better for it.
As Bach might have put it, sheep may safely graze. And as I might have put it, so may cyclists, in the cafe.
The village evidently welcomes migrants in search of a better life, simply looking for a place to live and work – well, swallows anyway: the bus shelter is off limits voluntarily until they’ve finished nesting (which should be very soon).
And I found it a friendly place. I can only assume the sign by one front door saying GO AWAY is meant jokingly. Do visit it on your next ride, and pop in to that lovely shop.
After my sociable and delightful refreshment stopoff in Wilton’s shop, I rode out up one of those back lanes. The scenic Worsendale Road meanders up from the flat base of the Vale of York to the top of the Wolds.
Crossing the A166, I headed down the chalk track through the splendidly named Cheese Cake Wold to Kirby Underdale, and through Painsthorpe back up to the very highest point of the Wolds: the 246m ‘summit’ of Garrowby Hill on Bishop Wilton Wold, just above the village.
David Hockney once painted Garrowby Hill, and if you try to cycle it amid the furious traffic, his startlingly-coloured, vertiginous depiction is how it will feel.
The pinnacle of the Wolds itself is on an earthwork, fenced off inside a water plant (along with the trig point). So I couldn’t sit on the top, poetically surveying the traffic roaring past on the A166. The nearest you can get to a conquest photo of this Marilyn is on the adjacent layby, or perhaps the waterworks gate.
Still, I was happy. Because from here it was a gentle, gorgeous downhill on back lanes of perfect gradient – no pedalling and no braking required – virtually all the way back to Pocklington, five miles away back on the basement of the Vale of York.
It had been a day of, sort of, unlimited and tactically satisfying diagonal movement; very appropriate for a Bishop.
So tell everyone about Bishop Wilton. But keep it a secret too, yeah?