As I bowled along the roads linking Herefordshire’s ‘Black and White Villages’ (named in honour of their two-tone buildings), I believed, for a second, in time travel. Here, in one of England’s least populated counties, little appeared to have changed for decades, centuries even.
The landscape of wooded hills, shot through with sparkling rivers, has not been scarred by industry or development. Farming is the thing here, and although mechanisation has changed the means of production, apple orchards still burst into blossom in spring, hops are