Worcestershire is England’s most undervalued county. Sauce, Elgar and cricket, not necessarily in that order, are what most people associate with the name. Otherwise it is that place we cross on our way to Herefordshire, its far smarter western neighbour, or the territory glimpsed on either side of the M5 as we whiz northwards to Birmingham, whose sprawl has chewed up a sizeable part of the ancient shire.
Among those small towns which ‘heritage’ enthusiasts like to claim as a distinctive English speciality, Pershore, Upton and Bewdley must be among the most spectacularly unvisited. Georgian canals, failed spas, even urban schadenfreude, have their buffs and adepts, but which of these ever moseys around the dock basins of Stourport, saunters through Tenbury Wells or pauses for a shudder at Kidderminster’s irredeemable hideousness?
John Betjeman, in a rare moment of imbecility, referred to Worcestershire as ‘dim’.
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