An English Gastropub Crawl

North of Hereford, north of Leominster, I rocket away from civilization along the narrow, brisk A4110 road. The hills grow taller, the hedges dense. Golden stone houses give way to black-and-white Tudor farmsteads. I arrive at the bridge that marks the tiny town of Aymestrey.

The Riverside Inn is a long half-timber building that wouldn't be out of place in a movie about Elizabeth I. The nearest neighbors are a handful of sheep across the River Lugg. For hundreds of years, the Riverside was known as the Crown, until it fell into disrepute. In the 1990s, it was bought and reinvented; those owners then sold it to a former engineering executive and his wife, who runs the kitchen.

TASTE OF ENGLAND Here's a sampling of the fabulous food and adorable lodging that award-winning writer Stephen Heuser discovered on his recent jaunt across England. • Launch the slide show RELATED ARTICLE • Planning a Pub Crawl

I'm staying in the Hayloft, the upper floor of a converted stable. My key opens the broad wooden door to a huge, eclectic aerie--burgundy slipcovers, a rustic wood-framed mirror, a coffee table with smoked glass.

As evening falls, the parking lot starts to fill up. Couples and families from the surrounding towns converge on the Riverside for dinner. They pack a room whose walls and heavy ceiling beams are garlanded with dry hops and hung with enough rustic objects to supply an antique fair. When I sit down for dinner, my head grazes a bugle.

The farm country of Herefordshire is quietly emerging as one of the best places in Britain to eat, and my dinner is like a map of the neighborhood: pork medallions from a pig raised nearby, gravlax made with trout from the nearby river, vegetables plucked a few yards away.

At night, I pull on a sweater and sit on the grassy terrace behind the stable. The sky is remarkably clear. The Milky Way stretches overhead; I see one shooting star, then another. At moments like this, it's hard to imagine that anything of much importance has changed in the past 400 years.

The Riverside felt remote, but it turns out I've only scratched the surface of remoteness. I've left Herefordshire, crossed the massive Severn River, and twisted my way into the highlands of West Somerset. Sue Hinds, at the time one of the owners of The Royal Oak Inn of Luxborough, has insisted I call so I don't get lost, but my cell phone keeps dropping its signal. "After you pass a pub called the Valiant Soldier, turn right," she says when we finally connect. "Keep going, even if it seems like you're lost, and eventually you'll come to about five cottages and a stone bridge. That's us."

This is pheasant-shooting country, and hunting prints line the Royal Oak's walls. One room displays a series of huge mounted river fish, some caught in the 1930s. Most of the 11 guest rooms are along a rambling upstairs corridor and identified by a teddy-bear theme. (My bear is from Harrods.)

There aren't many guests, but at dinner, tables miraculously fill up. The food is rich. A rump of lamb comes with some of the fat left on to give it a startling crackle and moisture. On the side is a bowl of red cabbage, zucchini, carrots, and buttery new potatoes. I order grilled Cornish sardines--a staple of the region, I've been told--with chorizo. The fish defeat even my practiced attempts at deboning.

After dinner, Sue pulls pints at the bar, then joins a table of locals. When I go upstairs, well past the nominal closing hour of 11 p.m., they're still there.

The next morning, Sue explains that the pub makes money on out-of-town guests, on dinners, and on the big lunches it throws for the men who work the pheasant shoots. But at heart, it's still an unofficial living room for the village. On Thursday nights, there are free snacks for neighbors; on Christmas, the owners shut the place to outsiders and throw a party. "Everyone mucks in together," she says. "It's very gregarious."

I can't shake the impression that this whole world, including the ghostly old woman who supposedly haunts Room 4, might just disappear once I drive off. Sue knows what I mean. "It's like Brigadoon," she says.