T he comedians Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan can currently be seen in a BBC2 series called The Trip, in which they travel around the beautiful north of England, and visit some of its finest restaurants. Have you seen it? Personally, I can hardly bear to look. Of course, I knew it was coming. A while ago, I interviewed its director, Michael Winterbottom, and he told me all about it, in his nonchalant way. I remember being confused by the concept – what? they just travel around and eat and bicker? – and feeling seriously anxious. As he listed the hotels on their tour, I queasily realised that the three of them were going to visit all my favourite places. I don't want Groucho Club types littering up my favourite places. I want them to stay in London, in blissful ignorance of the fact that the key to happiness lies in taking regular minibreaks north of Manchester.
By coincidence, I'm just back from one of these minibreaks. We went to the Forest of Bowland, which is the best-kept secret in the world: like Narnia in its Golden Age, only with the beguiling difference that it is 15 miles from Preston. We stayed at the Inn at Whitewell, which also appears in The Trip – why am I telling you this? – and is bang, smack in the Bowland's sublime Trough, by the river Hodder. What does one get up to in the Forest of Bowland? Well, the truth is that there is absolutely nothing to do except walk, eat and visit Clitheroe (my skill base, as they say at the DoE, does not include fishing, though it is good for that, too). I love walking, even if, thanks to Posy Simmonds, who kills off a character in Tamara Drewe in a bovine stampede, I have recently developed a cow phobia. I also love eating, and the food at Whitewell is very good, especially the scones and the roast grouse. Most of all, though, I love Clitheroe, which is exactly how a town should be – by which I mean, of course, that it is the way towns were when I was little, and my idea of heaven was a Swizzels lolly and a bottle of green pop (you say limeade; I say green pop).
Clitheroe, which has a pleasingly large population of stout ladies in button-shaped hats, is a neat sort of a place; view it from the mound of its castle, and you will see that it is contained all around by glorious hills, and thus lacks sprawl. This makes it, in my eyes, very lovely. This column, though, is not about the topography of northern mill towns; it is about food. Admittedly, Clitheroe does not have a Michelin-starred restaurant, though there are good places nearby (in Whalley, try Food By Breda Murphy, who trained at Ballymaloe). But it does have an excellent old-fashioned sweet shop (The Chocolate Box, which sells liquorice comfits, Yorkshire mixture and all the rest); a good vintner (D Byrne & Co); an amazing butcher (Cowman's Famous Sausage Shop, which sells dozens of varieties); and a weekly market that sells properly useful things like chops and cabbage (also, a fine food market, for a more, um, artisanal offer). Most noticeable of all, the town is dominated not by a giant branch of Tesco or Sainsbury's, but by an outpost of Booths, the family-owned and rather superior supermarket business whose 26 shops are scattered throughout Cumbria, Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire.
I am fascinated by Booths, which began its life in 1847 as a Blackpool tea dealership. Somehow, it has managed to flourish in the face of rapacious competition from the giant chains, and without ever sliding downmarket (not so long ago, it beat Fortnum & Mason in a competition to find the world's best food retailer). Every time I see its wine-coloured livery, it strikes me all over again that while the south-east has seemingly all but given up the struggle against Tesco, in the north-west the war is not yet over. The fact that it is also an excellent place to buy cheese – they sell 90 varieties – is just the sherbet on the lemon.
I don't suppose Brydon and Coogan visited Booths on their journey – or Clitheroe. But if you are in the process of being bewitched and inspired by their tour, if not their crabby banter, I offer them to you as a delightful afternoon diversion and as evidence that, contrary to what the AA Gills of this world believe, the north's posh restaurants are not entirely anomalous. Of course, the question is: do I want you to be bewitched? That's a tricky one. Northern pride dictates that I want you to visit just a sliver more than I want you to stay away.
rachel.cooke@observer.co.uk
