LAST week I escaped my City of London parish and spent a few glorious days in God's own country, Yorkshire.

Well, I say "glorious" when actually it chucked it down most of the time. We went to our favourite resort, the Cliffe Mount Hotel in Runswick Bay.

Dinners of crab and lobster at a quarter of the price they would extort from you back in London. We had a room with a balcony looking out over the most spectacular bay in Europe - in the world, probably. And we had a telescope.

Point the telescope over the bay and there ought to appear a miraculous vista: instead an impenetrable sea fret. As I said to my wife: "It doesn't matter. Just imagine the view."

Unabashed, next morning we set off to walk to the Hinderwell Show which was all mud and excited little girls on ponies. There was a wonderful stall there selling proper sweets - what my mother, in the early 1950s when sweets were still rationed, called "muck". Well, if this was muck, I was happy as a pig in it. Aniseed balls, gobstoppers, sherbert lemons, American cream soda... I bought the lot. I hob-nobbed with the cheerful stallholder who reminded me that in the old days when we were lads you got sweets and drinks with some kick in them: chlorodine lozenges with a touch of some anaesthetic drug; and it was always rumoured that Coca-Cola contained a smattering of cocaine in those days. It certainly tasted better in 1953.

The rain came on again and I ran back to the Cliffe Mount to fetch the car and rescue my wife from the mudflats. An expedition driving over the North Yorks moors in a fog so thick I thought any minute we would come across Castle Dracula. Tea and salt beef sandwiches in Helmsley, followed by a terrifying descent of Sutton Bank in zero visibility. I love my home county of Yorkshire whatever the weather, but I especially love it when I can actually see it.

All too soon and we were on the train back to the great metropolis where my time was not wasted, for I think I used it to discover the causes of obesity in children. I will explain. The train was full of utterly wild children all under the age of twelve. You know the sort: those who yell at the top of their voices and receive only limp exhortations from their parents to pipe down. No, not only exhortations, but threats: "I've told you before Charlene. Now if you don't be quiet there'll be trouble!" But there is no trouble, only a continuation of the din; for the truth is that the parents have no control over their children.

I wondered how the parents coped with the noise and chaos at home all the summer holidays. Then I noticed that most of these children were... let's say chubby. They ate and drank the whole journey: crisps, chocolate and sweetened drinks. Suddenly I glimpsed a vision of their home life. Mother, driven frantic, sticks them in front of a video and answers their constant demands to be fed and watered, for this is the only way to keep them quiet. Add to this shambles the fact that, in term time, owing to the endemic hysteria about paedophiles, the children are not allowed to walk to school, but have to be delivered by car. And then there are no fields to play in and New Labour has long discouraged competitive games. It's all called "progress" I suppose.

* Peter Mullen is Rector of St Michael's, Cornhill, in the City of London, and Chaplain to the Stock Exchange.