It\u2019s farm-to-fork dining at its freshest. I\u2019m sitting at a vast outdoor table in Herefordshire looking out over rows of vines. On the horizon, the Malvern Hills ripple towards the Black Mountains; in front of me is a selection of local produce: cheeses from Monkland Dairy, 6 miles away, salad leaves from Lane Cottage (8 miles), charcuterie from Trealy Farm (39 miles), cherries from Moorcourt Farm (3 miles), broccoli quiche (2 miles) and glasses of sparkling wine, cassis and apple juice made just footsteps away. This off-grid feast is the final stop on White Heron Estate\u2019s ebike farm tour \u2013 and I\u2019m getting the lie of the land with every bite.<\/p>\n
Before eating, our small group pedalled along a two-hour route so pastorally pretty it would make Old MacDonald sigh. Skirting purple-hued borage fields, we\u2019ve zipped in and out of woodland, down rows of apple trees and over patches of camomile, and learned how poo from White Heron\u2019s chickens is burnt in biomass boilers to generate heat. \u201cProviding habitats for wildlife is important, but we need to produce food as well,\u201d says our guide Jo Hilditch, who swapped a career in PR for farming when she inherited the family estate 30 years ago.<\/p>\n
She\u2019s electric: the writer gets on her ebike. Photograph: Rhiannon Batten<\/p>\n
The tours offer an immersive way of seeing British agriculture in action. Pausing in the estate\u2019s blackcurrant fields, Jo pulls bottles of chilled Ribena from a basket for us to drink (White Heron produces 5% of Ribena\u2019s blackcurrant supply) and encourages us to taste the fruit: fat and sweet, the berries are a whole different entity to the wincingly sharp little beads growing in my own garden.<\/p>\n
As if by arrangement, bells start ringing from the church\u2019s stand-alone belfry as I cycle by<\/p>\n
So lyrical do I wax about the blackcurrants that, after I arrive at my accommodation for the night, the estate\u2019s homely Field Cottage, there\u2019s a knock at the door: the delivery of a punnet to take home. I add it to the cottage\u2019s guest hamper, which is brimming with tangy Worcester Hop cheese, local raspberries, some of the estate\u2019s own apple juice and a miniature of its treacly, sharp-sweet cassis.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t have to worry about working it off. The following day I\u2019m back on the ebike on a new self-guided ride around north Herefordshire. One of a handful of routes the estate has curated around the region\u2019s farm shops, cider-makers, cheese producers and farm-to-fork restaurants, the trails link up some delectable pit stops in different corners of the county, some of which feature on Visit Herefordshire\u2019s new food safaris.<\/p>\n
The estate\u2019s ebikes come into their own on some of the rougher tracks <\/p>\n
Setting out while the early morning mist is still loitering over the estate\u2019s orchards, I swing over an old grass-covered railway line on to a quiet lane running between fields of hay, then wheel along to pretty Pembridge, with its rows of tipsy-angled black-and-white buildings. As if by arrangement, the bells start ringing from the church\u2019s stand-alone belfry as I pass, giving the impression of a medieval rocket about to launch. I stop in the village stores to pick up a loaf from Peter Cooks Bread and a coffee at Bloom & Grind before pedalling on to Eardisland.<\/p>\n
The mist lifts as I arrive, revealing a picturesque swirl of half-timbered buildings, a dainty 17th-century dovecote and an elegant bridge over the River Arrow. There\u2019s no time to dawdle, though. I\u2019m only partway into my 29-mile route and it\u2019s mid-morning already.<\/p>\n
I cycle down blissfully empty lanes to Monkland Dairy, set up three decades ago by ex-teacher Kaz Hindle and her husband, Mark. Having \u201cbought a cheese shop because of a drunken dinner\u201d, Kaz tells me the dairy came about when one of the shop\u2019s employees mentioned her grandmother\u2019s 1917 recipe for cheese. The grandmother turned out to be Ellen Yeld, one-time \u201cchief dairy instructress\u201d for Herefordshire, so the recipe was a good one. The Hindles refined it further to produce Little Hereford, a cheddar-like cheese that\u2019s now the dairy\u2019s flagship product.<\/p>\n
The tour offers pit stops to refuel on local produce. Photograph: Rhiannon Batten<\/p>\n
With Kaz semi-retired, the cheesemaking side of things has been taken over by ex-chef and former customer Dean Storey. Showing me the cheese cave and the dairy\u2019s vintage cast-iron presses, Storey tells that me he makes 30 to 40 Little Herefords a week and up to 300 of the dairy\u2019s deliciously creamy blue monks, plus some \u201cmore controversial\u201d cheeses such as ones featuring garlic and chive; \u201cMy kids love it in pasta,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n Get travel inspiration, featured trips and local tips for your next break, as well as the latest deals from Guardian Holidays<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: Newsletters may contain information about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. If you do not have an account, we will create a guest account for you on theguardian.com<\/a> to send you this newsletter. You can complete full registration at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n Resisting the urge to order the cafe\u2019s signature ploughman\u2019s, I hop back on my bike. Lunch beckons a few fields further on. The Riverside at Aymestrey is a pretty black-and-white inn beside the River Lugg. The hillside above it operates as a semi-wild kitchen garden. Among a bounty of damsons, cobnuts, jerusalem artichokes, fennel, lovage, kale, gooseberries and apples are pigs and chickens. \u201cThe garden started as a lockdown project and now we have 2.5 acres (1 hectare),\u201d says chef-patron Andy Link, as he shows me around. \u201cIt means we can work in food metres rather than food miles.\u201d<\/p>\n Soup at the Riverside at Aymestrey, which is supplied by its own semi-wild kitchen garden<\/p>\n I\u2019m transported back to the garden when I bite into an appetiser of summer veg croustade \u2013 a mouthful of crunchy peas, beans and mint enveloped with crushed seeds. It\u2019s followed by trout cured in gin and lemon verbena, with gooseberries and tendrils of sea purslane, then fall-apart local beef fillet and cheek from a farm 11 miles away. But it\u2019s the dainty, cloud-like savarin I have for dessert that keeps this hyper-Herefordshire meal on my mind as I wobble back on to my bike for the ride back to White Heron; it\u2019s soaked in a delicate syrup flavoured with pine tips.<\/p>\n The following morning, I do some foraging of my own, driving south to Longtown to meet wild food expert Liz Knight, of Forage Fine Foods, on her local patch. As we walk out along an old drovers\u2019 road to the fields past her converted barn, Liz teaches me to look at the landscape not just as a view but as a foodscape. There may be an extraordinary panorama of the Cat\u2019s Back hill across the valley, but we try to keep our eyes down: beneath our feet is pineapple weed, whose fruity flowers can be used to top salads or spice up cordials, broadleaf plantain, which can be fried like kale chips, and docks, whose ground seeds can be baked in bread and crackers.<\/p>\n Going wild: Liz Knight of Forage Fine Foods. Photograph: Rhiannon Batten<\/p>\n At one point, we come across an ancient linden tree, whose colossal gnarled trunk makes it a contender for the real-life Magic Faraway Tree, though Liz says that its real sorcery lies in its cucumber-scented flowers; delicious on salads, they are also said to help calm the nervous system. Nearby is a patch of yarrow. A forager\u2019s cure-all, yarrow\u2019s many medicinal properties include calming bites and stings, balancing hormones and soothing sore throats. Picking a few heads, we stroll back to Liz\u2019s kitchen to steep the flowers with honeysuckle in vodka to use as a tincture.<\/p>\n Back home that evening, I make a salad using radishes, runner beans and soft dorstone cheese from the Oakchurch Farm Shop, another pin on Herefordshire\u2019s food safari map. As I slice the veg, I think of everyone I\u2019ve met over the last few days. Seeing such careful tending of food first-hand has left me not just with the lie of the land, I realise, but with the experience of truly savouring it too.<\/p>\n The trip was provided by White Heron; its two- to three-hour ebike farm tour and tasting<\/a> is \u00a350pp; full-day slow cycle rides \u00a380pp; self-catering accommodation sleeps four, from \u00a3509 for three nights. Half-day foraging courses<\/a> with Liz Knight from \u00a355pp. For more information see visitherefordshire.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s farm-to-fork dining at its freshest. 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