On the buses

My first stop is Brass Castle Brewery, which brews Blue Bell in York’s outstanding house IPA. The taproom is on Yorkersgate, a busy main street. The brewery is in the yard, right behind, close enough for the brewer, Sam Teale, to wander in through the back door and chat to the barman about the brewing techniques employed in making a sour beer, a style he’s considering.

Sitting on a stool in the front window, I enjoy a pint of Bright, the brewery’s pale ale, hopped with Citra and Chinook, watching the traffic at the busy crossroads. The barman tells me he lives in York and we exchange notes on the city’s favourite pubs. Clearly the 840 bus route has an important dual purpose, not just taking tourists to smaller towns but giving locals a chance to enjoy York’s vibrant beer scene. 

After a walk past the delis and food shops in the Market Square, I arrive at the Blue Ball Inn, a pub with a perplexing interior. Before reaching the bar, I need to carefully step over an enormous (but thankfully very sleepy) Great Dane that’s laid out on the pub carpet. A tiny servery, surrounded by two small snug bars at the front, offers the most Yorkshire traditional selection of ales: two from Timothy Taylor and Tetley’s Bitter, sadly no longer brewed in Leeds. Before leaving, I climb over the dog again and explore the 16th century pub’s three curiously labyrinthine back bars.

There’s a bus stop outside the Blue Ball and I continue onward. After Malton, the route begins to climb out of the Vale of York towards the moors. After about twenty minutes we reach Pickering, a town crammed with characterful stone cottages at the foot of the North York Moors.

Working along the main street, I visit the Black Swan and White Swan, two upmarket coaching inns with good real ale selections. 

The Bay Horse a short distance down Market Place seems more authentically unchanged. The pub has no front door, access being from the passageway at the side, possibly related to its origins as a thirteenth century burgage (a medieval plot of land). The front bar in this Grade II listed pub has a low-timbered ceiling, propped up by ancient-looking posts. Two armchairs sit by the fire, above which is a large portrait of Oliver Cromwell whose officers were billeted in the pub in the English Civil War. I sip a pint of Timothy Taylor Boltmaker, with the distant click of pool balls audible from the modern bar at the back of the pub.

Heading north, the route passes through the picturesque village of Thornton-le-Dale and the tempting-looking country pub, the Fox and Rabbit in Lockton. The current two-hourly schedule favours stops in the small towns en route rather than isolated pubs and smaller villages, which would benefit from a more frequent service, but it still provides a vital link through a sparsely populated area.

Nonetheless, the advantages of bus travel over the car are shown spectacularly when the 840 climbs to the top of the moorland. The upper deck gives striking views of one of the National Park’s biggest natural attractions, the crater-like Hole of Horcum. It sounds like something from Harry Potter and, by coincidence, the bus soon passes Goathland station on the North Yorkshire Moors railway, where train scenes in the Harry Potter films were shot.

I alight shortly after in the centre of the picturesque moorland village. If Goathland looks peculiarly unchanged from the 1960s that’s because many local businesses – the combined garage and funeral director’s, the village shop – were locations for the long-running sixties-set TV series Heartbeat. I have a Black Sheep Bitter in the Goathland Hotel, better known as the social hub of the TV series, the Aidensfield Arms. The bar is virtually unchanged from when Nick Berry and Derek Fowlds used to down off-duty pints.

The bus climbs out of Goathland up what seems an impossibly steep gradient, giving superb views across the treeless moors, including the pyramid-shaped radar at RAF Fylingdales, an ultra-top-secret installation (or would be if it wasn’t on a bus route).

It’s a steep descent down Blue Bank from Fylingdales Moor with another fine view from the top deck of the North Sea suddenly coming into view and the ruins of Whitby Abbey in the distance. Twenty minutes after leaving Goathland, the 840 terminates near Whitby Harbour. With no worries about car parking, I can quickly head over the swing bridge and climb the 199 steps to the Church of St Mary, re-enacting a scene from Bram Stoker’s Dracula. 

Whitby Brewery’s taproom has a spectacular setting, under the ruined Gothic arches of the Abbey on one side and with an expansive view of the North Sea coast on the other. The taproom features six of the brewery’s ales. I ask why the beer appears to flow automatically from the handpumps. Barman Pete Holloway tells me, “to cope with serving ales at times of heavy demand we use Arlington tanks, which are effectively massive bags-in-a-box.” He says that while the beer is pumped to the bar, “everything badged on a handpump is genuinely cask conditioned”.

I head back to Church Street on the east side of town and the historic White Horse and Griffin. The ancient coaching inn’s atmospheric narrow bar, with a chandelier, seems little changed from when Captain Cook was said to have been recruited here. Sampling the Timothy Taylor ales, I’m surprised to learn its current incarnation only dates to 1993, reopening after an 11-year restoration. 

Whitby has several excellent micropubs. Quirky’s Den, facing the harbour is, well, quirky – a Gothic, steampunk temple to heavy metal music that welcomes drinkers of Theakston’s Old Peculier which it serves from the wood. Around the corner on Grape Lane is the cosy, two-roomed Green Dragon, which offers over three hundred beers, including two from Brew York on my visit. There’s also a Gothic theme with skeletons dangling by the bar and an odd window display, which depicts the Whitby landscape – with the addition of the Lord of the Rings’ Eye of Sauron. Maybe it scares the vampires away?

My last pub – and brewery – of the day is a climb up Flowergate on the west side of town. It’s quiz night at the Little Angel when I arrive and it’s standing room only. Verity, working at the bar, talks me through the two beers on handpump that are brewed on the premises at the Lady Luck brewery (named in honour of superstitious sailors). Both are horror-themed, she says: a porter called Black Cat and a session IPA, Kraken.

After enjoying Lady Luck beers, Verity shows me the brewhouse at the back of the pub. There’s also a bedroom on the top floor, which happens to be my accommodation for the night. My “no designated driver required” journey through some of Yorkshire’s remotest scenery is rounded off with a night in an actual brewery.

Now where did I put that garlic?