The Welsh Marches: England’s foodie frontier

I’m in a car embarking on a road trip through one of the great foodie regions of the world, charged with the onerous task of scoffing and boozing my way through five days of epicurean heaven. But where am I? Trundling along the Rhone valley from Lyon to Provence? Barrelling down the autostrada to Bologna?

No, I’m on the A458 just outside Shrewsbury. Because this is a tour of the Welsh Marches, England’s foodie frontier, from Shropshire through Herefordshire to Gloucestershire, where a food and drink revival over the last three decades has turned this lush, fertile, famously green corner of Britain into a gastro-destination as good as any in Europe.

My first stop is the Haughmond, a hotel/gastropub with a cute attached bakery, in the village of Upton Magna. It comes highly recommended, and the rave reviews are not wrong. After a punchy aperitif in the sunlit garden, dinner boasts scorched salmon on a bed of sweet pickled sorrel and it emphatically puts the mmmm in umami.