Cooking up a campsite delight

WHEN I went on camping holidays as a child, I seem to remember eating a lot of baked beans and fried bread. On one trip my mother purchased a fruit cake that was so vast and indigestible that even after two weeks there was still more than half of it left. So after reading Pitch Up: Eat Local (AA Publishing, £16.99) by Ali Ray, I realise that we should have been enjoying meals cooked from the finest local produce.

This clever guide suggests the best places to camp in the UK, what local produce to eat, and how to cook it. From grilling Welsh black beef burgers on the barbecue in the Brecon Beacons to cooking freshly caught mackerel on the beach after a day at the Dorset coast, the book brings locations to life with recipes and mouth-watering descriptions of regional food and its history, matching the country’s best producers, farmers’ markets, farm shops and pick-your-owns with some of the UK’s best campsites.

To research her book, Ali spent five years travelling across the UK in her campervan nicknamed Custard, searching out fish-smoking sheds on the north-east coast of Scotland, to the huge ‘cheese stones’ strewn in Lancashire fields. Her conclusion is that local food impacts an area’s landscape and defines its history. And my tip? Never take an enormous fruit cake from your local cash and carry…

To order your copy this week at the special price of £14.44 with free p&p, visit mailbookshop.co.uk.