Food Haven

I just spent a beautiful if rather blustery weekend in North Norfolk. It's a stunning place and restored my faith in beautiful Britain.

This area really comes into it's own if you are a foodie though - you can't turn a corner without finding a great pub, or someone selling potatoes, onions or home-made marmalade. It's lovely to see people doing this - if only it happened more in cities perhaps we might be more likely to know out neighbours.

Everyone has space to grow their own, and I saw plenty of people in their gardens working on vegetable patches, pulling up a leek here, an onion there. It's evident that people love their food up here - there are signs everywhere, restaurants and food shops - and people know their business. I asked a woman in a fishmonger where her smoked fish came from - the smoke house in the next village, she told me. That's about as local as you can get in my book!

A short way up the coast and we found the Cley Smoke House, where the husband and wife team show-cased a range of tan-coloured, smoked food. It's great to see traditions staying alive - they had a range of what I would call 'proper' smoked food - bloaters, herrings, and eel, pheasant and duck and of course good old mackerel. They also had the prettiest whole smoked trout I have ever seen - a million miles away from the bright pink fillets in the supermarket, these trout had skin like golden rainbows.

Admittedly, you can go wrong around here - some places have fallen victim to the coast's proximity to London, trying to cater to a very upmarket crowd, and more often than not, missing the mark by quite some way.

That's not to say the food isn't good - it is, just not necessarily what you want from a country pub. I was just after some simple, honest, local food, which I finally found in the Carpenter's Arms. Recommended to us by Mary at Glebe Farm B&B where we were staying (a shame she doesn't cook for guests in the evening - if the breakfasts are anything to go buy, dinner would be a treat), we ate a wonderful, warming, lovingly-prepared dinner.