The charity shop trail

Market towns are the best charity-shop hunting in England, and Thirsk packs an unusual number into a very small circuit. Six sit on Market Place itself: British Heart Foundation at 52, Cancer Research UK at 48, Blue Cross at 46, the Salvation Army at 45, Herriot Hospice Homecare at 14 and Oxfam at 63. Two more are a minute off the square, Sue Ryder down Millgate and St Teresa's Hospice along Finkle Street. Eight shops, and you are never out of sight of the clock.

The stock is the reason to bother. Donations here come from the big houses and farms of the Vale of Mowbray, so the book shelves run deep on country subjects, the china is older and better than city-shop china, and proper tweed and waxed jackets surface often enough to make checking the rails worthwhile. Hardback Herriots turn up regularly, which feels right in his own town.

Start at our door. Tea Time Cafe is at 87 Market Place, every shop on the trail is on the square or a minute off it, and the walk is level, short and needs no map. Millgate, for Sue Ryder, leaves the square at the bottom corner; Finkle Street, for St Teresa's Hospice, leaves from the other side.

Drivers get the first hour free on the Market Place, with Marage Road the fallback when the square fills on a market day. From Thirsk station it is about half an hour on foot on the flat, or a taxi from the rank by the clock on the square.

Work round in one direction rather than criss-crossing, and give it an hour at browsing pace. Twenty five minutes covers the shops on the square alone.

In each shop the same three places repay attention. The book shelves are where the country subjects and the Herriot hardbacks show up. The china is where the age of the town tells, since a good deal of it came out of houses that had kept it a long time. The rails at the back are where the tweed and the waxed jackets appear, usually in sizes that suggest they were bought for people who worked outside.

Density is what makes it work. Eight shops inside a minute or two's walk means no dead time between them, which is rare outside a city. The quality of what turns up follows from where the donations arrive from rather than from anything the shops themselves do, so the ceiling here is higher than the ceiling in a city suburb. Prices start at a pound or two, which means a family can browse for an hour and spend less than the cost of a round of coffees. All of it is indoors as well, so the trail is the obvious answer to a wet afternoon in Thirsk, and the shops are close enough together that nobody gets soaked between them.

Come on a Monday or a Saturday if you are serious about it. Market day brings donations in and the shops restock through the morning, so the rails are at their best before lunch. Sunday is the day to check rather than assume, since most keep short hours or stay shut and each charity sets its own times. Every shop takes cards now, though coins still speed a queue along. If you find something heavy early on, ask the shop to hold it behind the counter while you finish the circuit rather than lugging a box of china round the square. And drop your own holiday paperbacks in on the way out of town, which keeps the whole thing turning.