Among those small towns which ‘heritage’ enthusiasts like to claim as a distinctive English speciality, Pershore, Upton and Bewdley must be among the most spectacularly unvisited. Georgian canals, failed spas, even urban schadenfreude, have their buffs and adepts, but which of these ever moseys around the dock basins of Stourport, saunters through Tenbury Wells or pauses for a shudder at Kidderminster’s irredeemable hideousness?

John Betjeman, in a rare moment of imbecility, referred to Worcestershire as ‘dim’. Heaven knows what he meant, since, visually, the whole point about the county is its radiant openness, with broad vistas and big skies. The micro-landscapes within this panorama are embedded in a fascinatingly diverse geology. Patches of medieval forest dot the grey eastern escarpment, a long sandstone ridge to the north-west shelters the hops and cherries of the Teme valley, orchards and market gardens cover the rich alluvial Vale of Evesham, bounded on its southern fringe by the greeny-pink granite crags of the Malvern Hills, once known as ‘the English Alps’.

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