NZ Herald
  • Home
  • Latest news
  • Herald NOW
  • Video
  • New Zealand
  • Sport
  • World
  • Business
  • Entertainment
  • Podcasts
  • Quizzes
  • Opinion
  • Lifestyle
  • Travel
  • Viva
  • Weather

Subscriptions

  • Herald Premium
  • Viva Premium
  • The Listener
  • BusinessDesk

Sections

  • Latest news
  • New Zealand
    • All New Zealand
    • Crime
    • Politics
    • Education
    • Open Justice
    • Scam Update
  • Herald NOW
  • On The Up
  • World
    • All World
    • Australia
    • Asia
    • UK
    • United States
    • Middle East
    • Europe
    • Pacific
  • Business
    • All Business
    • MarketsSharesCurrencyCommoditiesStock TakesCrypto
    • Markets with Madison
    • Media Insider
    • Business analysis
    • Personal financeKiwiSaverInterest ratesTaxInvestment
    • EconomyInflationGDPOfficial cash rateEmployment
    • Small business
    • Business reportsMood of the BoardroomProject AucklandSustainable business and financeCapital markets reportAgribusiness reportInfrastructure reportDynamic business
    • Deloitte Top 200 Awards
    • CompaniesAged CareAgribusinessAirlinesBanking and financeConstructionEnergyFreight and logisticsHealthcareManufacturingMedia and MarketingRetailTelecommunicationsTourism
  • Opinion
    • All Opinion
    • Analysis
    • Editorials
    • Business analysis
    • Premium opinion
    • Letters to the editor
  • Politics
  • Sport
    • All Sport
    • OlympicsParalympics
    • RugbySuper RugbyNPCAll BlacksBlack FernsRugby sevensSchool rugby
    • CricketBlack CapsWhite Ferns
    • Racing
    • NetballSilver Ferns
    • LeagueWarriorsNRL
    • FootballWellington PhoenixAuckland FCAll WhitesFootball FernsEnglish Premier League
    • GolfNZ Open
    • MotorsportFormula 1
    • Boxing
    • UFC
    • BasketballNBABreakersTall BlacksTall Ferns
    • Tennis
    • Cycling
    • Athletics
    • SailingAmerica's CupSailGP
    • Rowing
  • Lifestyle
    • All Lifestyle
    • Viva - Food, fashion & beauty
    • Society Insider
    • Royals
    • Sex & relationships
    • Food & drinkRecipesRecipe collectionsRestaurant reviewsRestaurant bookings
    • Health & wellbeing
    • Fashion & beauty
    • Pets & animals
    • The Selection - Shop the trendsShop fashionShop beautyShop entertainmentShop giftsShop home & living
    • Milford's Investing Place
  • Entertainment
    • All Entertainment
    • TV
    • MoviesMovie reviews
    • MusicMusic reviews
    • BooksBook reviews
    • Culture
    • ReviewsBook reviewsMovie reviewsMusic reviewsRestaurant reviews
  • Travel
    • All Travel
    • News
    • New ZealandNorthlandAucklandWellingtonCanterburyOtago / QueenstownNelson-TasmanBest NZ beaches
    • International travelAustraliaPacific IslandsEuropeUKUSAAfricaAsia
    • Rail holidays
    • Cruise holidays
    • Ski holidays
    • Luxury travel
    • Adventure travel
  • Kāhu Māori news
  • Environment
    • All Environment
    • Our Green Future
  • Talanoa Pacific news
  • Property
    • All Property
    • Property Insider
    • Interest rates tracker
    • Residential property listings
    • Commercial property listings
  • Health
  • Technology
    • All Technology
    • AI
    • Social media
  • Rural
    • All Rural
    • Dairy farming
    • Sheep & beef farming
    • Horticulture
    • Animal health
    • Rural business
    • Rural life
    • Rural technology
    • Opinion
    • Audio & podcasts
  • Weather forecasts
    • All Weather forecasts
    • Kaitaia
    • Whangārei
    • Dargaville
    • Auckland
    • Thames
    • Tauranga
    • Hamilton
    • Whakatāne
    • Rotorua
    • Tokoroa
    • Te Kuiti
    • Taumaranui
    • Taupō
    • Gisborne
    • New Plymouth
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Dannevirke
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Levin
    • Paraparaumu
    • Masterton
    • Wellington
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Blenheim
    • Westport
    • Reefton
    • Kaikōura
    • Greymouth
    • Hokitika
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
    • Wānaka
    • Oamaru
    • Queenstown
    • Dunedin
    • Gore
    • Invercargill
  • Meet the journalists
  • Promotions & competitions
  • OneRoof property listings
  • Driven car news

Puzzles & Quizzes

  • Puzzles
    • All Puzzles
    • Sudoku
    • Code Cracker
    • Crosswords
    • Cryptic crossword
    • Wordsearch
  • Quizzes
    • All Quizzes
    • Morning quiz
    • Afternoon quiz
    • Sports quiz

Regions

  • Northland
    • All Northland
    • Far North
    • Kaitaia
    • Kerikeri
    • Kaikohe
    • Bay of Islands
    • Whangarei
    • Dargaville
    • Kaipara
    • Mangawhai
  • Auckland
  • Waikato
    • All Waikato
    • Hamilton
    • Coromandel & Hauraki
    • Matamata & Piako
    • Cambridge
    • Te Awamutu
    • Tokoroa & South Waikato
    • Taupō & Tūrangi
  • Bay of Plenty
    • All Bay of Plenty
    • Katikati
    • Tauranga
    • Mount Maunganui
    • Pāpāmoa
    • Te Puke
    • Whakatāne
  • Rotorua
  • Hawke's Bay
    • All Hawke's Bay
    • Napier
    • Hastings
    • Havelock North
    • Central Hawke's Bay
    • Wairoa
  • Taranaki
    • All Taranaki
    • Stratford
    • New Plymouth
    • Hāwera
  • Manawatū - Whanganui
    • All Manawatū - Whanganui
    • Whanganui
    • Palmerston North
    • Manawatū
    • Tararua
    • Horowhenua
  • Wellington
    • All Wellington
    • Kapiti
    • Wairarapa
    • Upper Hutt
    • Lower Hutt
  • Nelson & Tasman
    • All Nelson & Tasman
    • Motueka
    • Nelson
    • Tasman
  • Marlborough
  • West Coast
  • Canterbury
    • All Canterbury
    • Kaikōura
    • Christchurch
    • Ashburton
    • Timaru
  • Otago
    • All Otago
    • Oamaru
    • Dunedin
    • Balclutha
    • Alexandra
    • Queenstown
    • Wanaka
  • Southland
    • All Southland
    • Invercargill
    • Gore
    • Stewart Island
  • Gisborne

Media

  • Video
    • All Video
    • NZ news video
    • Herald NOW
    • Business news video
    • Politics news video
    • Sport video
    • World news video
    • Lifestyle video
    • Entertainment video
    • Travel video
    • Markets with Madison
    • Kea Kids news
  • Podcasts
    • All Podcasts
    • The Front Page
    • On the Tiles
    • Ask me Anything
    • The Little Things
  • Cartoons
  • Photo galleries
  • Today's Paper - E-editions
  • Photo sales
  • Classifieds

NZME Network

  • Advertise with NZME
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • BusinessDesk
  • Newstalk ZB
  • Sunlive
  • ZM
  • The Hits
  • Coast
  • Radio Hauraki
  • The Alternative Commentary Collective
  • Gold
  • Flava
  • iHeart Radio
  • Hokonui
  • Radio Wanaka
  • iHeartCountry New Zealand
  • Restaurant Hub
  • NZME Events

SubscribeSign In
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Home / Travel

A foodie tour of England's scenic north

Herald on Sunday
6 Aug, 2017 02:00 AM5 mins to read

Subscribe to listen

Access to Herald Premium articles require a Premium subscription. Subscribe now to listen.
Already a subscriber?  Sign in here

Listening to articles is free for open-access content—explore other articles or learn more about text-to-speech.
‌
Save

    Share this article

There are many ancient settlements in the north of England, tucked into valleys carved by streams and rivers. Photo / 123RF

There are many ancient settlements in the north of England, tucked into valleys carved by streams and rivers. Photo / 123RF

The North of England landscape that started a food tourism trilogy is a revelation, writes Pam Wade

Steve Coogan and I have shared a bed. Not at the same time, I hasten to add — but the actor and I slept in the same room at the Inn at Whitewell, in the same four-poster, and wrestled the same antique over-bath shower.

It wasn't a coincidence: I was stalking him. Him and Rob Brydon, who together starred in The Trip, the first movie in their now-trilogy about restaurant-reviewing tours. They have subsequently been through Italy and are about to be on NZ screens in The Trip to Spain, but in the original they travelled through northern England.

Although they were very funny, it was the food and, especially, the scenery that made an even bigger impression on me than theirs of Michael Caine.

"Big" is the right word: having associated England with a pretty, domesticated countryside of fields and hedges, I found the footage of the misleadingly-named Forest of Bowland's bleak empty moorland, bare rocky hillsides and distant horizons a revelation.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.
Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

The movie was filmed in winter; but even on a summer's day with the lanes fringed with cow parsley, dog roses and foxgloves, the scenery was wild and grand — and refreshingly under-populated compared with the Lake District, its better-known neighbour across the M6. Apart from a scattering of hikers, bikers and horse-riders, there was just the odd tractor busily turning hay and scenting the air — or, less appealingly, spreading slurry.

The signature section is the Trough of Bowland, a length of winding road through a deep valley and up over a 295m pass to a viewpoint in almost the middle of what is officially an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. All around are bare, blunt fells, or hills, draped with drystone walls and grazed by shaggy sheep nosing through the heather. Solitary farmhouses huddle in hollows, pheasants panic over the road, shadows chase across the hillsides.

It's still England, however: there are many ancient settlements here, tucked into valleys carved by streams and rivers. They're all pretty, like Chipping, where the national Britain in Bloom competition is taken with deadly seriousness; Dunsop Bridge, in the exact centre of the country; and Kirkby Lonsdale, with its Devil's Bridge.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Pleasantly untouristy is the market town of Clitheroe. Here the butcher sells 34 types of sausage, the museum is full of surprises, such as the 120,000-year-old locally-found rhino horn and hippo teeth, and Pendle Hill, beside the town is still known as the place from where 10 witches were taken away to be hanged in 1612.

Most of them went to the scaffold at the Castle in nearby Lancaster, which holds the record for more hangings than anywhere else in England. The Crown Court still sits here, and it was a prison until very recently: it's crammed with great stories that guide Peter delivers with customised relish. Finding Kiwis in his group, he was happy to share that Edward Gibbon Wakefield, among the founders of Christchurch, was tried here for abducting a rich man's daughter, and sentenced to three years in prison.

The building is full of things to marvel at and recoil from, and novelties like sitting in a judge's chair, or in the dock — or being shut in pitch dark in the cells.

Morecambe, just a few miles away, also has plenty in both those categories: a broad beach with fast tides and quicksands, and more tat and tack along the seafront than you could shake a Kiss-Me-Quick hat at. The lettered sticks of rock are tacky in both senses, with their messages of Lousy Lover, Plonker and Tosser; but the afternoon tea at the Midland Hotel is a classic, tiered cake stand and all.

Discover more

Travel

The garden that wants to kill you

15 May 08:50 PM
Travel

England: World's longest trek a step closer

23 Jul 12:00 AM
Travel

England: Away with an Austen princess

06 Oct 11:00 PM
Travel

England: Harry Potter power

25 Jun 05:00 AM

For food to get excited about, however, back in the Forest of Bowland it was a dead heat between Coogan's choice, the Inn at Whitewell, and the Parker's Arms. The view from the inn's dining room, over a gently burbling river and rolling pasture where sheep, rabbits and ducks were bathed in soft mellow light, was the perfect accompaniment to excellent home-made chicken pate, potted crab and fish pie, and sticky toffee pudding: English food at its very best.

But at the Parker's Arms at Newton, the tasting menu had 11 — count them — pretty and interesting dishes coming to the table in a long and jolly lunchtime. Friendly and funny, Kathy and Stosie proudly presented such locally-sourced delights as mushroom parfait, vodka-cured salmon, smoked trout caught half a mile away, unexpectedly delicate black pudding sausage rolls, a 70 per cent Valrhona chocolate indulgence and, finally, Wet Nellie, which wasn't wet, and tasted of Christmas.

They thoroughly deserve their awards, and Coogan and Brydon made a big mistake in not coming here too.

Perhaps I'll mention that to Steve, next time we share a bed.

IF YOU GO

Getting there: Emirates flies from Auckland to Manchester, via Dubai. Lancaster is an hour's drive north of Manchester.

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Staying there: Stay in the Forest of Bowland at the Inn at Whitewell or the Parker's Arms at Newton and in Lancaster at The Ashton.

More information: See forestofbowland.com and visitbritain.com.

At the movies: The Trip To Spain, the third installment of Rob Brydon and Steve Coogan's road movies, premieres in New Zealand on August 17.

Save

    Share this article

Latest from Travel

Travel

Nervous to visit Egypt as a solo female traveller? Here's a worry-free way to do it

Travel

A visit with the grizzly bears of British Columbia

Travel

Why Raiatea, an ancestral homeland of Māori, is a must-visit for Kiwis


Sponsored

Your Fiordland experience, levelled up

Advertisement
Advertise with NZME.

Latest from Travel

Nervous to visit Egypt as a solo female traveller? Here's a worry-free way to do it
Travel

Nervous to visit Egypt as a solo female traveller? Here's a worry-free way to do it

Travelling Egypt is not for the faint-hearted but this approach may be one of the easiest.

14 Jul 07:00 PM
A visit with the grizzly bears of British Columbia
Travel

A visit with the grizzly bears of British Columbia

14 Jul 07:00 PM
Why Raiatea, an ancestral homeland of Māori, is a must-visit for Kiwis
Travel

Why Raiatea, an ancestral homeland of Māori, is a must-visit for Kiwis

14 Jul 06:00 PM


Your Fiordland experience, levelled up
Sponsored

Your Fiordland experience, levelled up

25 May 12:00 PM
NZ Herald
  • About NZ Herald
  • Meet the journalists
  • Newsletters
  • Classifieds
  • Help & support
  • Contact us
  • House rules
  • Privacy Policy
  • Terms of use
  • Competition terms & conditions
  • Our use of AI
Subscriber Services
  • NZ Herald e-editions
  • Daily puzzles & quizzes
  • Manage your digital subscription
  • Manage your print subscription
  • Subscribe to the NZ Herald newspaper
  • Subscribe to Herald Premium
  • Gift a subscription
  • Subscriber FAQs
  • Subscription terms & conditions
  • Promotions and subscriber benefits
NZME Network
  • The New Zealand Herald
  • The Northland Age
  • The Northern Advocate
  • Waikato Herald
  • Bay of Plenty Times
  • Rotorua Daily Post
  • Hawke's Bay Today
  • Whanganui Chronicle
  • Viva
  • NZ Listener
  • Newstalk ZB
  • BusinessDesk
  • OneRoof
  • Driven Car Guide
  • iHeart Radio
  • Restaurant Hub
NZME
  • About NZME
  • NZME careers
  • Advertise with NZME
  • Digital self-service advertising
  • Book your classified ad
  • Photo sales
  • NZME Events
  • © Copyright 2025 NZME Publishing Limited
TOP