During a recent trip back to Stroud in Gloucestershire, I spent a delightful weekend cavorting around beneath hay wagons (trying to re-create Laurie Lee’s scene from Cider with Rosie.) And, as a poet myself, it got me thinking about how authors write about food.
Laurie Lee once wrote that ‘bees blew like cake-crumbs through the golden air and white butterflies like sugared wafers.’ In The Darling Buds of May, H E Bates speaks of the ‘may-trees carrying blossom as rich and thick as Ma’s lavish Jersey cream… broad belts of quivering laughter slapped across the strawberry field.’
Both descriptions are detailed, delicate and slightly sensual. It makes me crave good country cooking, or want to snuggle up with a cream tea in a quaint little tea parlour.
If anyone is planning a trip out of London and into the Cotswolds, you simply must visit Well Walk Tea Room in Cheltenham. Crammed full to the brim with antiques and curios, the setting is almost as delicious as their sumptuous cakes. I enjoyed home-made lemonade, cheese and beans on toast followed by honey and ginger ice-cream. The staff were an absolute treat (I respect anyone who mockingly gives me a slapped wrist for not eating my crusts!) but what buttered me up the most were the lip-smackingly reasonable prices!
Written by Hay Brunsdon
Restaurant Guides 
Gad brothers, what an absolute bargain