“AND the nominations for the Great British Street of the Year award are: Kensington High Street, Portobello Road and... High Street, Skipton.” The line-up has raised a few eyebrows; not least in Skipton.

In its own terms, this small market town on the edge of the Yorkshire Dales has plenty going for it. It has kept its sturdy, stone-built character; it is ruggedly, bracingly, “outdoors”; and it's probably one of the best places in Britain to buy waxed jackets and stout brogues.

But is it punching way above its weight in the Great Street competition, run by the Academy of Urbanism, a think-tank promoting good urban design, civic pride and quality of life? Is Skipton just a dogged David battling a pair of slick London Goliaths? Maybe, but it has already seen off Edinburgh's Princes Street, Belfast's Donegall Street and Bath's Royal Crescent: thoroughbred thoroughfares the lot of them.

Last year's winner was Buchanan Street in Glasgow. This year's will be announced on Wednesday. So what are Skipton's chances?

The train from Leeds speeds through a landscape of sweeping Pennine hills and sheep-packed fields, dropping me at a station pretty with filigree ironwork and hanging baskets. A noticeboard hints at the pace of local life, with adverts for the bridge club, the Pitch and Putt Challenge and the Craven Lawn Tennis Club.

The craven what? Do they specialise in timid serves and tremulous rallies? Not at all. Craven is the Yorkshire district around Skipton. It lends its name to the Craven Herald & Pioneer, the 155-year-old weekly newspaper that still puts adverts on its front page. Don't miss Mexican Bob's salsa classes at the Tempest Arms.

The noticeboard also has something a bit different: a neatly typed poem about the shortcomings of the human race. It's signed P.J. Krumins, from the PJK Art Gallery, just off the High Street. A ten-minute walk later and I'm talking to him. He is a retired teacher from Latvia, and he tells me that he pins up new poems every two or three months to challenge assumptions.

So what assumptions does he have about the shortlisting of the High Street? “I don't believe it,” he says. “It's an extremely well-preserved street and there aren't many of its width in England. But there is little of interest. It's an everyday street.”

Well, it depends on your everyday. Much of the High Street is a broad marketplace, partly cobbled, lined by buff-stoned Victorian and Edwardian shops and offices, with narrow alleys snaking off behind them. Pevsner was sniffy about it. “A modest street,” he said. “Little that needs singling out.”

That's hard to judge on market days - there are four of them a week - when much of it is hidden by stalls selling everything from door knockers to birdseed, lemon-stuffed olives to non-iron polo shirts. Mark Jarvie is selling sweets. “Getting in the street final was a surprise,” he admits.

“But a lot of people are stuck in cities and they don't see anything as quaint as this. So maybe...” He turns to weigh out cough-candy for an elderly regular customer. “I've parked my husband in WH Smiths reading the railway magazines,” she volunteers.

Market day brings in the traffic and the coach parties. They throng the charity shops (a lot of those), the tearooms and Craven Court, a shopping arcade whose homely, old-fashioned design delighted Prince Charles when he opened it 20 years ago.

Up the street, the usual clone-town chains are here in force, but plenty of small Skipton-owned businesses engrain a sense of local identity. I take in the canal, whose tow-path leads to a basin busy with narrowboats, and browse round the museum. Its displays include a 1950s gas cooker and a tribute to Thomas Spencer of “Marks &...” fame, a canny-looking Skipton man born in a cottage on the site now occupied by Woolworths.

The main tourist draws, apart from glorious walking country, are the parish church and the castle, whose gates loom at the top of the street. It's a place of quiet courtyards, dark corridors and twisting staircases, and it has an administrator, Sebastian Fattorini, who can put his adopted town in a metropolitan context.

“Portobello Road is an extremely exciting place, with all the young people and the fashion,” he says. “High Street Ken is very nice; they've spent a lot of money on it; but if I'm in London I would rather walk down South Molton Street or Marylebone High Street.

“Just look at Skipton High Street, though. You've got the castle and the church, the wide pavements, fantastic countryside behind the castle, woodland. We're all very excited about the nomination and I'm amazed that someone has spotted us. Most people here think we can win it... We're all dead chuffed.”

Skipton tourist information: 01756 792809, www.skiptononline.co.uk, www.academyofurbanism.org.uk

Doubles from £280, room-only; 400 rooms.Skipton High Street

Restaurant Le Caveau, 86 High Street. Three-course set menu £21. “We're not pretentious, we don't write the menu in French or anything.”

Pub The Black Horse, 16-18 High Street. Pint of Copper and Dragon bitter £2.10, packet of crisps 60p, G&T £2.30.

Hotel The Red Lion Hotel, 27 High Street. Doubles from £70 B&B. Only three rooms, 16 more being opened next year.

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