The town is straight off a box of fudge, all honeyed stone and pansies waving from prize-winning baskets
What’s going for it? Helmsley’s so sweet I can feel the cavities forming in my teeth from 10 miles away. The town is straight off a box of fudge, all honeyed stone and pansies waving from prize-winning hanging baskets. Utterly delicious, with its Norman castle, Palladian pile, secret garden and streets of rigorously renovated and scrupulously scrubbed 18th-century cottages. Just not very good for the waistline. Imagine living here: you’d need a will of iron, blinkers or a StairMaster tethered to your shins to cope with the tea shops and bakers, delis and grocers, selling sucrose in various forms: pickles, preserves, jams, chutneys, chocs, fudge, treacle, Yorkshire curd tarts, mint choc chips... To survive, work it all off in the open air pool – don’t worry, it’s heated. Or look beneath the packaging and see the earthier market town it was, and sometimes still is. Market day, Friday mornings, perhaps, when the tarpaulined stalls are hugger-mugger. Or on a Sunday afternoon in summer, when the leavening presence of leathered bikers congregate with coach parties in Market Place, pausing for a pint en route to Scarborough. Some of the best charity shops in the north, according to resident Simon Read – a virtue of an ageing population.
The case against Too sweet, too Tory, too touristy for some.
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