The hotel: the view from room 1 of the White Swan inn on a sunny Saturday morning is a spritz for the soul. Beneath the window, Pickering’s market square slopes away, buttressed by sturdy shops that still bear the names of the people you’ll meet inside: FJH Wrothwell, Chemist and Druggist; Paddisons of Pickering, for clocks and watches; and the duelling bakers, Russell’s and Cooplands, which square up across the street, flashing their gooseberry crumbles and Yorkshire curd tarts. For your average supermarket-shopping urbanite, the crush in Horsley’s butchers has to be seen to be believed.

The White Swan stands proud and paternal in the middle, as it has for 473 years — small-paned, tall-chimneyed and so archetypal that it could be a coaching inn off a collector’s plate from the Franklin Mint. Indoors, the hotel treads the tightrope between quick-smart service and country-pub friendliness, and never puts a foot wrong. There are beams in the bar and beams at reception, where the deputy manager, Angela Nixon, dispenses 100-watt smiles to all comers.

The personality of the place is defined by the owner, Victor Buchanan, who springs in, spaniel-like, for a pint and a chat most evenings. His A-Z guide to the hotel, supplied in every bedroom, is so irreverent that you’ll want to bring it down to read over breakfast. “There is no longer a dress code here,” it says under D. “However, anyone seen wearing a shell suit may be pushed near an open fire.”

The Swan’s tiny taproom is illuminated by a log fire that looks as if it’s been smouldering continuously since 1532, and by lots of slow-burning conversation among the locals and guests. Across the hall is “the snug”, a room that might have defined the word, with plum paintwork, oak panelling, and sofas that grab you like quicksand.

What about bed and board? The 10 bedrooms and two small suites are individually dressed in what you might call minimalist country style — impeccable shades of white, ochre and beige, with just enough weighty oak furniture to anchor the atmosphere in a previous century. Most are smallish, but the details are just right: goose-feather pillows, DVD player under the telly, and a proper heft about the sheets and towels. The bathrooms are compact and classy, with vintage fittings, Penhaligon smellies and champagne buckets for bins. If you like people-watching, request a room on the front: number 1, 10, 11 or 12. But even towns such as Pickering now have their post-pub yob element, so if you’re an early-to-bed type, opt for a quieter one at the back.

The Swan’s restaurant is of the flagstones-and-flickering- candlelight variety, and, like the rest of the hotel, it takes honest-to-goodness Yorkshire ingredients and coaxes them gently upmarket. The list of local suppliers, available from reception, is almost as long as the menu itself: the sirloin you’re eating comes from Radford’s, near Whitby, the leg of lamb from the Hole of Horcum, the goat’s cheese from Grosmont.

What he can’t get down the road, the chef, Darren Clemmit, seems to make himself: chocolates, chutneys, bread, marmalade, sausages, ice cream — even the tomato ketchup with breakfast, which he has elevated to the status of a delicacy. The specials usually include two or three fish dishes landed fresh from Whitby: perhaps poached turbot with mussel cider and tarragon stew, or Dover sole with spinach, sauteed spuds and garlic butter.

Something to drink? Buchanan is a serious sommelier, and the hotel’s cellar has clarets back to 1934, plenty of 1963 port, 10 quality pudding wines and his particular passion: his collection of old St Emilions. Assorted case ends are sunk into the restaurant walls — but think hard before you point to the one stamped Château Canon Premier Grand Cru Classé 1972. It’s £132 a pop.

Must we really leave the hotel? You’d be daft not to. Pickering alone is worth a full day’s exploration, with its staircase of silvery stone cottages, character shopping and general caught-in-time quality.

It has a crumbly 12th-century castle (which is open on winter weekends), a rather good museum of Victorian bygones (which isn’t) and even a 1930s cinema, which you feel should be showing Robert Donat in The Thirty-Nine Steps rather than Ocean’s Twelve. Don’t miss the parish church, with its spectacular (and spiffingly gruesome) medieval frescoes: King Herod receiving John the Baptist’s head on a plate; a fey-looking St Edmund, perforated with arrows; and the cartoon-strip torture of St Catherine on her spiky wheel.

The town’s star turn, though, is the restored station at the foot of the hill, terminus of George Stephenson’s North Yorkshire Moors steam railway. Here you’ll find men on stepladders furiously polishing gas lamps, a superannuated station porter with a squashed-fig face and half-mast trousers, and, in the gift shop, Nancy Torbet, who’s a dead ringer for Granny Dryden out of Postman Pat.

The train runs 18 miles to Grosmont, through some of the most cinematic scenery in Britain: purplish heather, flat-topped hills and an occasional startled fawn. You can get off at Goathland, which doubles as Hogsmeade in the Harry Potter movies, and walk back to Pickering (15 miles — or 7 if you alight at Levisham). Trains run daily until February 20, then from March 19; 01751 472508.

Who will like it? Wine buffs: the White Swan’s list will delight even serious oenophiles.

Who won’t? Whine buffs: serial complainers will have a really hard time finding something to moan about.

• The White Swan (01751 472288, www.white-swan.co.uk) has doubles from £130 to £180, B&B, with singles from £80. Three-course dinner is about £25pp, excluding drinks.

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