Summer Evening Excursions

Do try the Thompson’s Arms at Flax­ton, right by the level cross­ing. As rural a pub as you could ima­gine, set amongst the rolling arable land­scape at the edge of the Vale of York as it runs up to the Howar­d­ian Hills. The beer is excel­lent, the wel­come cheery, and you are unlikely to find it over­crowded.  Approach via Strens­all Com­mon, best route is to wheel your bike across the rail­way from the Strens­all / Flax­ton Road and use the track through the woods till you hit the Flax­ton / Sher­rif Hut­ton Road — Thompson’s is a few hun­dred yards to your right.
Then, in another dir­ec­tion entirely, take the Roman Road out of Cop­m­anthorpe to the west, fol­low it as it deserts the straight line for Tad­caster and zig­zags along the side of 18^th cen­tury enclos­ures, until the Sun at Colton comes in sight.  Much more fre­quen­ted this (they say the food is good too) with sev­eral not­able real ales. A wind­ing and undu­lat­ing route, afford­ing excel­lent train­spot­ting pos­sib­il­it­ies at Colton Junc­tion, will take you to Bolton Percy, where The Crown serves what looked like extaordin­ar­ily nour­ish­ing gravy, allows sword-dancing in the garden, and the beer is cheap (Sam’s, of course). Fol­low this with one of the world’s most delight­ful green lanes to Appleton Roebuck where the pub had been so entirely anonymised extern­ally that one wondered if it were truly still licensed premises.  But yes, and Sam’s again. And then it’s a long pedal back through the late dusk to the bright lights.