A bounty on your doorstep

Fancy a spot of foraging? Caroline McGhie finds the most fruitful places to live, from the seas of Skye to the beaches of Dorset

Here are the best places to get a taste of the land – and the sea. At the Three Chimneys restaurant (threechimneys. co.uk) on Skye, Michael Smith (twice a finalist on the Great British Menu) has established a huge reputation for using the island’s natural larder. Bracadale brown crab, Colbost skink and Loch Dunvegan lobster are on the menu most nights. “A lot of people here forage,” says Michael. “On Skye we are literally in the wilderness, so we have a very intimate relationship with the landscape. Everyone in the kitchen forages and a couple are dedicated to it. “Nature wakes up much later here, about five-anda-half weeks later than the South Coast. It starts with wild garlic at the end of April, then comes meadowsweet and gorse flower, of which we use a huge amount.” After that, foragers switch to the shoreline for cockles, clams, mussels and seaweed. Michael thinks that foraging is now integral to our food culture and that we are more fascinated by it than we have been for decades. “In the Highlands there is a great tradition of going off to pick brambles on Sundays and come home to make blackberry jam and apple crumble,” he adds. “This time of year, there are nuts to be picked on the hazel trees, and chanterelle mushrooms, but I can’t tell you where they are because it is important to keep the location secret.” A property here doesn’t need to match the price of caviar. Strutt & Parker (01463 719171; struttandparker.com) is selling a two-bedroom whitewashed cottage at Ard Dorch, with fabulous views over Loch Ainort, the Island of Scalpay and the Trotternish Peninsula, for £175,000. You can sail a boat off the village jetty and walk to the Kylerhea Otter Haven to watch the animals playing along the whole shoreline. Some people are lucky enough to be able to forage on their own land. George Travis and Linda Davis (left) do more than just make apple pie. They have turned some of their 13 acres into apple orchards (with lovely old varieties like Crimson Queen and Devonshire Quarrenden) to produce juices and organic ciders. They live in a fourbedroom farmhouse called West Lake, near Beaworthy, north of Dartmoor. They also have a wild flower meadow with County Wildlife Site status which has more than 100 varieties of self-seeding flowers. In a wet patch, willow has been planted for coppicing which they supply to local basket makers. And their hens, which are the Old English Pheasant Fowl breed loved by smallholders, keep busily laying eggs. George and Linda have also just taken the honey from their seven beehives, which they will sell with their own label. The work is hard, but satisfying. As they are now in their 60s they would like to sell West Lake, with its land and huge barns. It is available through Stags (01566 774999; stags.co.uk) at £630,000. “It is an ideal life, and we are connected to a whole network of pure food makers who are passionate about what they do,” says Linda. Celebrity chefs come thick on the ground here, and all encourage us to use locallygrown foods, from the fish in the sea to the nettles in the fields. Hugh FearnleyWhittingstall has moved his River Cottage HQ to Axminster, just across the Devon border, but his presence is still felt. The Eat Dorset Food Fair (eatdorsetfoodfair. co.uk) at Parnham House, Beaminster, on October 18-19, will have cookery demonstrations by Mark Hix and Mitch Tonks, and will be opened by Valentine Warner and Michael Caines. The wonderful Hive Beach Café will run a champagne and oyster bar, and members of the English Truffle Company (englishtruffles.co.uk) will show their best finds. The tradition of foraging connects us to history as well as to the unchanging landscape. At Higher Brockhampton, Julian Bunkall of Jackson-Stops & Staff (01305 262123; jackson-stops. co.uk), is selling a fivebedroom house and paddock. It lies just next to Thomas Hardy’s birthplace, the thatched cottage in which he wrote Far From The Madding Crowd, now owned by the National Trust. It is also close to Thorncombe Woods and the heathland, the inspiration for Hardy’s Egdon Heath, which he peopled with gorse (furze) cutters. For him this wilderness was a great inviolate place which “had an ancient permanence which the sea cannot claim”. The house costs £825,000. There may not be a greenwood tree, but any woodlander will feel at home.