
Originally Posted by
BBC
'Tis harvest time, the traditional season of plenty, and today the time for culinary festivals. With British cuisine no longer a national joke, food tourism is booming.
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in the past two decades, there's been a resurgence in demand for quality products made by time-honoured methods. The appetite is growing for regional produce, such as Somerset cider, Caerphilly cheese and Cromer crabs. Food tourism has become big business, worth nearly £4bn a year.
In a recent survey of tourist perceptions of the UK food industry, two-thirds of Britons said that food and drink influenced their holiday choice. The West Country, Wales and Scotland occupied the top three destinations.
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Even once-sleepy backwaters such as Bray in Berkshire, Padstow in Cornwall and Shropshire's Ludlow have become gastronomic hotspots thanks to star chefs Heston Blumenthal, Rick Stein and Shaun Hill
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- Britain produces 700 regional cheeses - more than France
- It has 600 varieties of apple
- And 125 species of fish and shellfish in its waters