Slad, Gloucestershire
01452 813429
Mon-Sat, noon-midnight; Sun, noon-11pm; lunch Mon-Sat, noon-2pm, Sunday, noon-4pm; dinner, Tue-Sat 6.30pm-9pm

5 stars: Leader of the pack; 4 stars: Packs a punch; 3 stars: Packhorse; 2 stars: Flat pack; 1 star: Pack to square one

The Woolpack at Slad was Laurie Lee’s pub, which sounds quite appealing — three words to instantly evoke the quintessence of cosy Cotswoldiness — but on the way there, I remembered about the chapter in Cider with Rosie where the village pub’s clientele murder a traveller and get away with it to boot.

But I wasn’t scared. I had been here before about 10 years ago, with Damien Hirst, who had just bought a studio nearby. The studio had belonged to the sculptor Lynn Chadwick, whose son Daniel, also an artist, currently owns the Woolpack.

There is no doubt that the prospect of dining out in the sticks is gradually becoming more appealing than appalling. Things have changed. Most places are still rubbish, but 10 years ago, they were all rubbish. Now, if you look carefully enough, you can eat rather well in rural England, and you probably stand the best chance of striking it lucky in a pub. The high end of the countryside culinary spectrum, the country-house hotel, still languishes in interminable inter-course sorbets and mouthfuls of unbidden twiddle, created by ex-London chefs slowly going mad in a hidden kitchen, while fat, provincial businessmen boast to each other in loud voices at the tables. But pubs can deliver something unexpected, even wonderful.

Authentic country pubs are actually all but disappearing: now they are stripped, straightened, painted pastel colours and turned into dining rooms by new owners. It’s easy to see why. It’s hard for these isolated taverns to sell much booze to people who have to drive home. The increasing value of the surrounding properties demands a certain turnover of the pubs, and the only way to achieve that is by selling food. Once, these places were the nirvana of working-class men. These days, our country pubs are populated largely by middle-class lunching ladies. There is only one geezer left in our village, and he has nowhere to go now. His natural habitat has been eradicated, gastro-pimped to death, and he walks around aimlessly in forlorn circles with his dog. An authentic country pub that hasn’t been aggressively made over is a treasure indeed.

The Woolpack is rustic: properly rustic. The toilets are outside, and it’s not that pretty, although almost everything else you can see for miles around is. It’s a well-weathered boozer stuck on the side of a valley in the heart of the Cotswolds proper, a series of tiny rooms that, perhaps, suggest an attic — an interesting attic, with the delicate clutter of detail that modernity lacks. It wears the traces of years gone by — a log-stacked fireplace, battered surfaces and accumulated furniture.

People were drifting in and out peacefully when we arrived, and locals lingered in the bar, plotting their next murder perhaps. We had booked, but it was quiet in the tiny dining room — just the two of us. There were only three tables and a window seat. The tiny window in the thick wall opposite presented a huge view across the silent valley — the peaceful curves and lines of the hedgerows, the glow of another house on the far side in the deepening twilight. Much nicer than a sorbet.

We were hungry. We ordered a lot of starters from the blackboard. (There were no menus. It’s a pub.) The food is well executed and unfussy. Unfussy, probably because the kitchen has a staff of one — Mr Michael Carr, formerly of the French House, and he does everything from the mopping to the toppings.

The mussels arrived almost instantly, with smoky belly bacon, and my wife, Claire — it was our fifth anniversary — stormed through them. They were good, she said, between frantic mouthfuls. (She is pregnant.) Her parsnip soup was agreeably unusual, a fluffy purée with the light bite of raw parsnip. My pigeon breast sat on a comfy bed of watercress that wilted beneath it in a pleasing way, with lots of juices getting involved, too, as I dug in. A little bit of caramelised onion lay in wait beneath the meat and the acidity cut through the darker flavours of the pigeon beautifully.

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