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I had a couple of near misses in my search for the Stinking Bishop. The first was a receptionist in a hotel up in the Malvern Hills, who admitted hearing tell of such a Bishop in the vicinity, but had never allowed herself to get too close. More encouraging was the manager of a restaurant at a Gloucestershire vineyard, who said that the Bishop was usually a regular feature, but customers had complained and they'd had to take him away.

I finally cornered the Bishop in Newent, a delightful little place with an ancient market cross, a couple of family butchers and a cake shop called Daffodil. He was lurking in the Basket for All Seasons, and he looked innocent enough, but by that time I'd become sufficiently wary of his reputation to ask for him to be thoroughly wrapped. And then I put him on the back seat of the car, where he began to hum. Metaphorically speaking, of course.

This was, in fact, no Spanish Inquisition, nor any other kind of churchly purge. I was on a cheese mission, a twinkly odyssey through the heart of England on the trail of the Lightwood Chaser, the Herefordshire Hop et al. The Stinking Bishop - probably the most pongy cheese ever to bless these shores - was to be the holy grail. The bonus was the delicacy of the English countryside.

We're not particularly known in this country for distinctive local cheeses, at least not in comparison to France. Cheddar comes from everywhere; Stilton from Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, and Wensleydale from, yes, Wensleydale. But Worcestershire? Whoever heard of a cheese from Worcestershire?

And yet my odyssey started just south of Worcester itself, by a giant 'Cheese' sign on the A38. Ansteys cheese-making farm is up a bumpy lane at Broomhall, but, post foot and mouth disease, visitors are directed past the farm gate to the nearby St Peter's Garden Centre in Norton, a real megapolis amongst garden centres, which had its own Ansteys cheese counter. Here I found an Old Worcester White, an aristocratic, nutty, cheddary number that went down a treat. Delayed only temporarily by sherry trifle in the Potting Shed (restaurant), I continued my odyssey cross-country on the trail of a Lightwood Chaser. This I eventually cornered in a garden shop in Rushwick and consumed in the car outside; musty and creamy and delicious.

Then it was south to Great Malvern, that supremely elegant spa town that trails along the ribs of the Malvern Hills, at the heart of Elgar country. Apparently Her Majesty the Queen never travels without Malvern water, and there's certainly something queenly about the town that grew around the spa. In Lady Foley's tea room at Malvern station - still as pretty as when Elgar himself stood, humming, on platform one - I had a large slice of bread and butter pudding before retiring up the hill to a genteel hotel.

The Malvern Hills rise out of the Worcestershire pasture like a giant, standing tsunami. From my floral room in the Cottage in the Wood, with a cup of Earl Grey to hand, I could look right out over the flat Severn Valley several hundred feet below. Later I scrambled up the remaining few feet of the Malvern tsunami through the Wyche cutting to look down on the other side, but the view towards Wales was quite different, as if the high tide was following right behind.

Next morning, surfing down into Gloucestershire (rechristened Poshtershire in honour of the likes of Liz Hurley, Kate Moss and Gwyneth Paltrow, who have recently moved here) in my quest for the Bishop, I was soon disorientated by an outrageously pretty village called Red Marley D'Abitot, which didn't sound very British. That was followed swiftly by the Three Choirs vineyard, which sits above a giant dimple of vineyards, overlooked by a chic restaurant, winery and guest house, straight out of California or New Zealand; relaxed, sunny and high quality. Fortified by a twice-baked Goats cheese souffle and a wine that was fresh, crisp and fruity, I set off for my final rendezvous with his holiness.

In the end the Bishop came quietly. The creation of Charles Martell in honour of Cistercian monks who used to farm his land, the cheese gets its name from a variety of pear from which perry (pear cider) is made, and in which the cheese is washed. Mind you, it doesn't smell washed; airlines would probably ban it, and I certainly wouldn't have offered a lift to anyone while it was in the car in case they jumped to the wrong conclusion. But eaten back up on Perseverance Hill, with the wind up my nostrils and Severn Valley once again at my feet, it was deliciously, appropriately, high.

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