We’ve left the outskirts of Telford (Wellington to be precise) and I won’t miss it. Saturday night was a late one in Market Drayton as the hunt for pub food took us to a place with a lot of monosodium glutamate that you know about, but they were also playing 80s music, so we stayed for far too long singing along, accompanied by cider. Never mind we thought, we’ll get a good night’s sleep in Wellington. To pass the time walking to Wellington, we had a sweepstake on why the Swan Hotel there was half the price of our average cost per night in every other BnB. Was it the local area?

I mean, who doesn’t love the A1 Pizza / Cock Hotel / Plumbing Supplies combo? Actually A1 pizza gets 3.6 on Google, so it looks like very few people like that one. We also had the following things on the sweepstake list: ancient, tired rooms? A hotel some people might rent by the hour?

We did not have this:

At 11pm, as the volume of the out of tune singing and thumping base was turned up even louder, the bed actually vibrated. At midnight, the last person left and I heard the door close and the tiny tick of the date moving forward on my watch. Mark snored through the whole event.

So, my memory of the outskirts of Telford is somewhat marred by feeling like the walking dead today, but it’s not just that, it’s the general level of mediocrity in this physically and metaphorically flat part of England. On the outskirts of the outskirts of Telford, Hortonwood to be precise, there is an area of new house builds that are very unlikely to solve the affordable housing crisis rife in our news feed currently. This is Ashwood in Hortonwood Lane, Hortonwood.

Any architectural design / kurb appeal this building has, the other four next to it have exactly the same look. They’re all called something to do with Ash despite probably never being near an Ash tree at any moment in their building. All the gardens for these huge family homes appear to be about 2 metres squared, which you can see from the footpath that runs across the front of all of them. They give off the impression of being large, expensive and special, but I’m left with the impression that if every one is special, no one is special.

The same seems to be happening with regional differentiation, or the lack of it, in things like the food we’ve experienced. I’d like to point out that I do realise we have seen the tiniest slither of the different regions in the UK and even then, in the somewhat homogenous environments of reasonably priced establishments close to, or inside, our accommodation. However, if anyone could look at this menu and isolate it to even a whole county I would be impressed.

I wouldn’t mind if someone in the establishment (preferably in the kitchen) cared about what they were doing. But the lamb shanks on this menu are served with both fresh and seasonal vegetables. No one is even reading the menu they’re writing, what are they not paying attention to in the kitchen itself?

I swear I’ve seen exactly the same menu at least three times; this walk is becoming a groundhog day of eating mediocre pub food interspersed with two great meals at L’Enclume and Corriegour Lodge Hotel. Mark and I discussed the fact that few people probably cook regionally delicious food at home and with the availability and affordability of supermarket ready meals, eating out is facing strong competition and needs to capture a mass market.

Having said that, I have no idea what market these scrambled eggs are capturing with their pale, little, dry, grainy balls, running away from my fork this morning. 

The UK has amazing regional specialties, but, for example, we’ve spent nearly a week in Lancashire and not seen a single Lancashire hot pot. It’s not expensive or difficult to make, not seen it once anywhere we’ve been in Lancashire. I also realise we may be in a vacuum currently regarding high quality food. We’re the blue dot, repelling all the Michelin recommended places, like a penicillin soaked disc on an agar plate of bacteria.

So, maybe when we hit Cornwall we’ll be overwhelmed with the breadth of pasty flavours and cream teas and the South West really is where the regional flavour is at, we’ll see.

In the meantime, the area around Bridgnorth today was pretty to walk through, along both cycle paths and by the river. Even in the rain……

Distance 33km even though it should have been 31km. Distance from regionally interesting food: infinitesimal