Ooh, I could throttle them. I feel like dragging them bodily behind the bar
and squeezing till their pips squeak.”
I’m with Nicola Reynolds at the Stagg Inn in Titley, and she’s getting a wee
bit animated. There are lots of very good reasons to frequent the Stagg: the
feisty friendliness of the welcome, the chunky rustic decor, the even
chunkier cheeseboard — and especially the menu, which made Nicola’s husband,
Steve, the first pub landlord to win a Michelin star. But it’s probably best
avoided if you plan to ask for a pint of Magners Irish Cider.
Nicola and Steve are Herefordshire born and raised, just like the Mortimer
Forest venison, Madgetts Farm duck and Titley Shoot pheasant on their
blackboard. They were championing local, traceable ingredients when Jamie
Oliver was still eating school dinners. So there’s no way they are going to
serve imported apple-based fizz in the heartland of farmhouse cider-making.
Instead of the fashionable Irish mega-brand (“Some people put ice in it, can
you believe!”), Nicola stocks Dunkertons, milled at nearby Pembridge in a
skew-whiff barn using apples from its own organic orchard.
“It’s beautiful stuff,” she bubbles, “crisp and fresh as a good Sancerre. It
deserves to be sipped, not guzzled — and it definitely mustn’t be watered
down.”
Time for some first-hand research. Next morning, I get on my bike to
Dunkertons Farm — the first stop on a bespoke cider trail created especially
for cyclists by Visit Herefordshire. Tootling through the delectable
Tudor-framed triangle between Leominster, Hereford and Hay-on-Wye, the trail
aims to tap into Britain’s sharpening thirst for local, flavourful
gastro-tourism. And if you think it sounds idyllic, freewheeling through a
soft-focus landscape of oak woods and orchards while pausing frequently for
farm-gate degustation with artisan cider-makers, you’d be so very right.
Dunkertons’ yard is ripe with yeasty fermenting smells, and apples are
everywhere: bending orchard boughs, piled high on pallets outside the mill
and squished underfoot into pungent rosettes of russet and yellow. I marvel
at the rickety wooden conveyor still used to sort the fruit, say hello to
Adam and Eve, the vast oak vats for the top-secret blending, then ring a
barn-door bell — and Ivor Dunkerton appears to pour out his passion for his
craft.
Despite a name that suggests he was born in hay-smock and breeches, Ivor
arrived from London 25 years ago, a downshifting television executive with a
penchant for cider and £30,000 to splash on his dream.
“When we came, the farm-cider tradition was dying. We had to learn from
scratch which apples to grow. Now we’ve got a museum orchard of rare
varieties: things like Bloody Turk, very sharp with pink juice; and Sheep’s
Nose, which is almost extinct, but lovely and light for blending. Lots of
folk have followed us, and people are making cider properly again. Visitors
come just to taste it. Which is marvellous.”
Ivor reckons even perry, fermented from Herefordshire pears, is returning to
vogue, after an especially black period referred to by locals as “the
Babycham years”. By now, Ivor’s svelte wife, Susie, has joined us, and I’m
on my third free slug of nectar, the dry, toothsome Black Fox, a dangerous
7% brew named after a mythical beast sometimes spotted in the cider
orchards.
This is when a cider-cycling conundrum suddenly occurs to me. I’m tasting for
nowt — but how can I buy? I don’t even have panniers. How would I get the
stuff home? “Don’t worry,” says Susie. “You carry it back in your belly.
“We got a jolt last week when three chaps in deerstalkers came hovering above
the hedge, like men on a magic carpet. It was a group in period dress,
riding penny-farthings. They were doing the cider circuit, like you... but
I’m afraid they didn’t get beyond the barnyard bench. The bell kept going;
we kept topping up their glasses. Four hours later, they were still here.”
A sobering tale. I settle for a takeaway bottle of Black Fox, which fits
neatly into the water- canister slot on my crossbar, and wobble away towards
Weobley. What you notice, touring on two wheels like this, head skimming
above portly hedgerows, is how fruit farming still seasons the scenery here
— especially in autumn, crunch time for cider-growers. Old orchards stipple
the hillsides, some trees pinpricked with dinky yellow pears, others doubled
over with crimson apples as big as cricket balls.
A gang of scrumping kids skedaddle over a fence as I approach; scribbled signs
advertise plum chutney; and there’s an aromatic windfall in every lane and
garden.
Historywise, Herefordshire is sozzled in cider. In the 14th-century church,
tithes were paid in it, babies were baptised in it, and it was used to ward
off evil spirits and part-pay the local wights and wenches. Top farmhands
could hope to get two gallons a day at harvest time — which may explain the
squiffy vernacular architecture, arranged in half-timbered hamlets where
black-and-white cruck barns and cottages totter tipsily around the square.
It’s sensational countryside — an authentic remnant of olde England that
heritage tourism seems to have missed. Highlights of my increasingly
unsteady 20-mile ride include the extravagant dovecote at Luntley, several
storeys high since 1674; and the ancient ciderhouse by the village green in
Dilwyn, so big that it’s now split into 17 dwellings. But then, round here,
even the bird tables are jettied and corbelled.
Best of all is the bizarre Norman belfry in Pembridge.
It looks like an upside-down ice-cream cone and feels like a medieval siege
engine, pitted with arrow slits and mottled by musket damage. A notice from
the “tower captain” is advertising for bell-ringers, and the ambience inside
could convert even a heathen like me to campanology.
Fortunately, I’m diverted from that idea by the equally atmospheric New Inn,
next door to the church — “new” since 1300 and an instant new entry in my
top five country pubs in the world. It’s got family photos on the mantel, a
curving settle big enough to seat a row of 10 scrumpy-quaffing yokels, and
an inglenook cavernous enough to smoke the Boscobel Oak. And I’m feeling
thirsty again.
I know I’ve had a few flagons, but I’m sure I saw a Black Fox behind the bar.
No little while later, I trundle along a moss-filigreed farm track to The
Buzzards, where I’m bed-and-breakfasting, and try not to giggle as its
muddied, slightly madcap owner, Elaine Povey, tells me about her afternoon
chasing after her staff — Molly, Priscilla and Apricot — with a tape
measure, in a vain bid to gauge their girth. “The pigs are my working
partners here,” she explains. “They root around, turn over the soil, manure
it — they’re my gals. But I do need to be able to estimate their dead
weight...”
Elaine is intoxicating, a force of nature. When she took on her smallholding,
it had no bathroom, no fireplace and a tree through the roof, and she’s
spent 20 years single-handedly planting woodlands, building badger hides,
dredging meres and generally turning The Buzzards into an organic haven for
weekenders and wildlife. She also bakes a mighty fine Herefordshire apple
cake. I forget to ask whether she’s a cider-drinker — but whatever she’s on,
I want a pint of it.
Today has been a mere appetite-whetter. Tomorrow I’ll spin out again on a
second cycling route, from Ledbury, with five more cider-makers to meet and
drink with, including Melvyn Dickinson at touristy Westons in Much Marcle,
with its horse-drawn dray rides, rare-breeds farm and bottle museum; and
Mark Catlin of Lyne Down Farm, who brews his tipple using an 1880s
twin-screw cider press he dragged out of the nettles.
But tonight I’m already a gallon to the good, and buzzing. What do they do for
after-hours excitement out here? Maybe I’ll head back to the Stagg at
Titley, and try ordering a pint of Magners.
TRAVEL BRIEF
The cider trail: Visit Herefordshire’s cider-cycling leaflets
are available free from 01432 260621, www.ciderroute.co.uk. Wheely Wonderful
Cycling (01568 770755, www.wheelywonderfulcycling.co.uk) will deliver hire
bikes to anywhere on the Pembridge route; from £15 a day. For the Ledbury
trail, contact Saddlebound (01531 633433, www.saddleboundcycles.co.uk); £10
a day.
Dinners and digs: the Stagg Inn (01544 230221,
www.thestagg.co.uk) offers three courses for about £25pp; double rooms from
£80, B&B. The Buzzards (01568 708941, www.thebuzzards.co.uk), near
Kingsland, has cottages for four from £250 a week, or B&B from
£35pp.
The New Inn (01544 388427) does pork loin in apple, cider and cream for £10.
For lunch on the Ledbury tour, you won’t top the Scrumpy House (01531
660626, www.scrumpyhouse.co.uk), with cider-braised ham and eggs for £8.
THREE MORE TIPPLER'S TOURS
KENT
Kent wouldn’t be Kent without its shapely oast houses, and you can pay homage
to the hop on a tour at the 17th-century Shepherd Neame Brewery, in the
photogenic market town of Faversham (£7; 01795 542016,
www.shepherd-neame.co.uk). Afterwards, balance your belly in the saddle
(Downland Cycle Hire, 01227 479643) and follow National Cycle Trail 1 out to
Whitstable and Canterbury, where the Bishops Finger inn is the perfect place
to toast your ride.
SOMERSET
Somerset’s cider farms are ripe for a driving tour: passengers should start
with a double near Taunton — sizeable Sheppy’s (01823 461233,
www.sheppyscider.com) and tiny Tanpits (01823 270663). Then east for a shot
of award-winning cider brandy at Burrow Hill (01460 240782,
www.ciderbrandy.co.uk). Book in at the Old Rectory in Cricket Malherbie
(01460 54364, doubles £95, B&B), and next morning stroll out to
Perry’s (01460 52681, www.perryscider.co.uk) for a sup in the cider barn.
YORKSHIRE DALES
Britain’s longest pub crawl is the Inn Way (www.innway.co.uk), a 76-mile
walking trail linking the best village inns (26 of them) in the Dales. If
you’ve only a weekend, sample the tour at the Black Sheep Brewery in Masham
(01765 680100, www.blacksheepbrewery.com), a specialist in dry, full-bodied
Yorkshire ales, then explore the town walk (downloadable from the website),
pausing (naturally) at the four inns en route.
