Easby Abbey

Easby is the easy one. It is free, it is open to anyone who walks up, and it sits right next to its own car park a short drive north of Thirsk. For a ruin of this quality that combination is unusual.

What survives is better than the low profile suggests. The east range of the cloister stands substantially, including the chapter house, and the refectory is the piece that ends up in most photographs. There is a gatehouse, the canons' dormitory and fragments of the abbey church from the 1170s and 1180s. Most of the rest was stripped of its lead and pulled down by 1538.

Inside the precinct, and still in use, is St Agatha's parish church, which holds rare thirteenth-century wall paintings. That combination of roofless abbey and working church with medieval paint on the walls is what lifts the visit above a quick look at some stonework.

North from Thirsk on the A168 and A167, then the B6271 towards Richmond. The car park is signposted off the B6271 and the abbey is right beside it, so it is a very short walk in. There is a voluntary donation box for 1 or 2, which goes to St Agatha's rather than English Heritage.

The better approach, if you have the time, is to park in Richmond and walk. It is about a mile and a half along the Swale from Richmond Castle, and since English Heritage sends you to Richmond for the toilets and the food anyway, walking out and back builds the practicalities into the day.

Note that the car park serves an unstaffed free site on a minor village road. A car is fine. Nobody publishes a capacity or says anything about coaches, so a large group should not assume.

Walk the cloister range first, since it is the best-preserved part and gives you the plan of the place. The chapter house is in that range. Then the refectory, then out to the gatehouse.

Go into St Agatha's. It is the reason to give this site an hour rather than twenty minutes, and the wall paintings are the single best thing here.

If you have walked out from Richmond, the return along the river is as much the point as the abbey. If you have driven, Richmond itself is a mile and a half on, with the castle, the toilets and lunch.

The wall paintings in St Agatha's, and the fact that they are still on the wall of a church you can walk into rather than behind glass somewhere.

The history is unusually specific for a site this quiet. It was founded about 1152 by Roald, constable of Richmond, as a Premonstratensian house, and English Heritage claims it was only the third such house founded in England. It founded Egglestone as a daughter house in 1198, and was enlarged in 1392 by Sir Richard Scrope, whose family made it their burial place.

Then in 1536 it was suppressed with only eleven canons left, and that December the townspeople of Richmond briefly restored them during the Pilgrimage of Grace. English Heritage's account of what followed is blunt: a vengeful Henry VIII ordered the monks hanged, and the abbey and its lands were leased to Lord Scrope for 300 pounds. It is worth saying that the order is documented and the carrying out of it is not. Jervaulx, the other end of the same story, lost its abbot at Tyburn the following June.

The fine canopied choir stalls were salvaged and are now in Richmond parish church, which is another reason to make the two into one trip.

Do this one from Richmond if you possibly can. Park in the town, walk the mile and a half out along the Swale, look at the abbey and the church, and walk back for lunch. It solves the total absence of facilities and gives you the castle as well.

If you drive straight there, use the loo before you leave Thirsk and take a drink with you, because there is nothing at all on site. Wear something with grip: the ground is uneven, gets muddy after rain, and there are steps within the ruins. Winter closing is 4pm and the light in that valley goes early, so aim for the middle of the day between November and March.