SWW's emergency plans.have catastrophic leaks

Whiff of pigs replaced with scented candles

- PHILIP BOWERN

WHEN my daughter lived in London, she said the best measure of the gentrification of an area was when the coffee shops started to outnumber the fried chicken takeaways.

More lattes and fewer deep-fried chicken wings meant house prices were on the rise. The correlation was uncanny, she said.

I think there is a similar measure that can be applied to the country side. When the farm shops are easier to find than the Spar shops and it’s simpler to buy a scented candle than a fence post, then a rural district has shaken off its Wurzel image and become smart.

In my quite touristy corner of Devon, that process is well underway. In some other, rather more defiantly agricultural, parts of the South West, the transformation is taking longer, but it’s definitely happening.

With the passing of my parents just after Christmas, Easter marked a moment for reflection and I was musing on the changing face of the countryside in a nostalgic frame of mind as we marked the first big family occasion without Mum and Dad.

When I was growing up in rural Wiltshire, bank holidays and Sundays in the countryside were largely untroubled by much in the way of commercial activity. I was addicted, for a while in the 1970s, to long rural bicycle rides around the quiet lanes. But if I didn’t pack a plastic bottle of orange squash and half a packet of digestives filched from the larder before the off, I would have had nothing to eat or drink until I got home.