In truth we do not want to know that barns are patched with zinc sheeting and that the modern milking parlour looks like a cross between an industrial kitchen and somewhere you'd take your car to be fixed.

Reality notwithstanding, however, we search the summer long for the perfect rural retreat – where plump warm scones are served on doilied plates with jam and cream, over tables laid with lace cloths, where the air hums with gentle conversation and, in moments of hush, the clock can be heard ticking on the wall. Outside is forever bathed in sunshine. A border collie rolls on his back in the yard – and the pig talks …or possibly even flies.

Our search takes us first to Betton Farm, on the Racecourse Road in Ayton. Tabitha having upped sticks to a new home in Leeds, my mother comes with me. The pecan pie looked delicious, but we were starving by the time we cross the quadrant to the restaurant building, so we saved all thoughts of cake for later and opted for steak pie, chips and peas, at just under a fiver each.

The plates are lovely and hot, says mum (who notices such things) and the pastry was nice and short. There was plenty of extremely tender meat in the pie too – at least when we started; we licked the plates so clean we had to take cakes home for later.

Yorkshire curd tart: delicious, plenty of fruit, nice and sweet. The cakes are all home made at the farm bakery and also on sale in the farm shop alongside jams from the local area and farm eggs. For the record, the eggs (an inflation-busting 99p a half dozen) bear little comparison to the super-market variety.

Finally, the girls who served us, as ever the most important piece of the jigsaw, were lovely, a little bored between coach loads, but smiling, willing and efficient.

I think the Betton Farm experience is probably best served whole, as part of a trip to the on-site birds of prey centre, or honeybee centre, or for a poke around the little shops in the yard for local goodies and holiday trinkets. In truth, it is not the most picturesque of
locations, though the restaurant itself, housed in a converted farm building, has huge picture windows looking over the Vale of Pickering.

But I would stop off again, starving quite probably after riding lessons in Snainton, and mum? "Ooh, yes, definitely," she says. And there are some places she flatly refuses to enter, you know.

Value for money: 3.5
Overall: 3.5