I’VE always been fascinated by those stories about people who have come back from the dead. I mean those patients who tell how they experienced heavenly, out-of-body experiences when their hearts briefly stopped on the operating table. Then there’s Lazarus, of course, brought back to life by Jesus four days after being buried.

But what about pubs that come back to life after appearing dead and buried? Such as the Bay Horse at Burythorpe, which closed in 2014 and lay shut for two and a half years and, like so many other village pubs, looked set to be re-developed into a house.

That would have torn the heart out of this pretty little village in the Wolds. But this was a community that refused to accept its doom. Villagers formed a campaign group to explore ways of getting it re-opened. The group successfully lobbied for the pub to be listed as an ‘asset of community value’ – delaying planning permission for its conversion and giving breathing space so a community bid to buy it could be mounted.

That didn’t happen but in late 2016, the pub was re-opened by Vito and Abbie Logozzi, who had already worked wonders at the Goodmanham Arms near Market Weighton- which won a rave review from my colleague Steve Lewis just recently. They decided to buy this pub too, with Vito’s brother Franco running it day to day.

My former colleague, ‘Guzzling Gav,’ aka beer writer Gavin Aitchinson, recently suggested I should pay the Bay Horse a visit for Eating Out review, raving about how good it was when he went there.

I decided to take my family to the Bay Horse to celebrate two recent birthdays and a graduation. We set off on a Saturday lunchtime, just after winter had finally got going in mid-January and, getting a little lost, found ourselves driving on a back road across hilltop fields covered picturesquely in an inch or so of snow.

With a little help from GPS, we eventually found the village and then the pub. It’s a lovely old building on the village’s main street and when we arrived it was really packed. We had not been able to book a table in advance but fortunately we found just one table free, in the cosiest place in the bar, right next to a gorgeous fire with logs burning merrily.

The décor and atmosphere were charming, with stone flag and brick floors, wood panelling walls, tankards hanging from the ceilings and plenty of old timbers. The owners apparently spent months restoring the pub to its historic best and it showed. Equally importantly, the staff were very friendly and attentive throughout our visit.

The bar offered eight ales on tap, all costing a very reasonable £2.80 a pint, and I had a very decent Yorkshire Blonde while staff were happy to serve my wife a prosecco without us having to buy the entire bottle. My son was on a dry January and so chose a soft drink, as did my daughter.

The entire menu was on a blackboard above the fire and it showed there was really just one ‘starter’ going today: a soup of the day, cream of parsnip and potato on this day, with crusty bread, for £4.25.

I wasn’t going to resist this and the steaming bowl of soup was just the thing for a dank winter’s day, tasting both savoury and a little sweet, with further hints of spice and tanginess.

For mains, there was a selection of about eight dishes. The choices apparently change over the days, weeks and months, and some on this day had an Italian slant, while others were distinctly Yorkshirey.

We could have splashed out £14.95 on a sirloin steak, hung for 28 days, but all the other choices were at about the £9- £10 mark. Several sounded very good and we dithered, before my daughter and I went Italian, opting for Spiedini Di Pollo, which meant marinated skewered chicken served on a bed of mushrooms and rice, for £9.95. It was excellent, with plentiful chunks of tender and flavoursome chicken breast.

My wife chose ‘farmhouse rabbit and vegetable casserole,’ for £8.95, asking for it to be served with home-made chips for an additional £2.45. She said it tasted lovely, with a rich gravy, but I wondered if there could have been a few more chips. My son opted for beer-battered haddock with chips and peas for £9.95, and said it was ‘awesome.’

My son and I just had room left to share a pudding: there was a choice of two – chocolate sponge pand syrup sponge pudding, and we went for the former, served with two-tone custard – yellow and chocolatey.

It was sweet and delicious.

So, not an-out-of body experience but certainly a heavenly olde-world village pub.

We left vowing to return on a warm summer’s day, when we might call in for another meal at the end of a nice walk through the Wolds.