BRIAN PEDLEY visited the Cotswolds to sample the unashamedly indulgent delights on offer

MY guidebook  told me on an "exceptionally clear day" it would be possible to see 14 counties from Broadway Tower, the second highest point of the Cotswolds.

However today, more than 1,000ft above sea level, I found middle England mostly obscured by a light mist that swirled like the steam rising from Sheila Vincent's jam and coconut puddings.

Click here now for amazing deals to the Cotswolds!

I'd hauled myself uphill from Broadway Village, past grazing ewes and through cloying mud as thick as Sheila's legendary sticky toffee sauce.

Staying at the Three Ways House Hotel, six miles away in Mickleton, Gloucestershire, I never had the opportunity to meet the wonderful Sheila in person but I did get to luxuriate in her puddings.

Three Ways House is where, for 25 belt-bursting years, the heavy brigade of English desserts has been ritually celebrated with love, laughter and "lashings of custard".

Wheezing to the summit of Beacon Hill is part of the ritual.

It's what you do the morning after larding it with the Pudding Club.

"Indulge. Enjoy yourselves, " said Master of Ceremonies Simon Coombe, addressing the 70 of us who'd booked for the monthly, all-comers Pudding Club "meeting".

Want incredible deals to the Cotswolds? Click here now...

We stood, slacked jawed, beneath a blackboard menu, which was effectively a "light" main course but with "afters" that comprised, not one, but seven of Sheila's puddings. There was to be no slacking as tradition dictated that we strived to eat them all. We also learned the Pudding Club's inspirational story.

Simon, his wife Jill and business partner Peter Henderson acquired Three Ways House 15 years ago, when the culture of pudding eating was well embedded.

Original owners Keith and Jean Turner founded the club in 1985 with a group of friends, as an act of resistance at a time when English puddings of yore were being bulldozed aside by "sweet trolleys" laden with Black Forest gateau, tiramisu, banoffee pie and other non-indigenous invaders. Even custard, so beloved of English schoolboys, was being swamped to near-extinction by litres of low-fat ice cream and something called a "jus" that trickled horrifyingly red across the plate.

Guests can now book into a handful of pudding-themed rooms. I found myself in Lord Randall's Bed Chamber, named after the peer who gave his name to a trayload of sugary stodge. A full-length cartoon of the hedonistic earl was painted on my bathroom door, while ceramic images of puddings shone seductively from above the bath taps.

At the tables I met couples respectively sharing the Jam Roly Poly Room, the Chocolate Room and the Sticky Toffee and Date Pudding Room.

The occupants of the Spotted Dick Room wisely chose not to announce themselves.
"You have to pace yourself on nights like this, " said Dave, a retired lecturer from Hay-on-Wye, Powys.

"That way you get through the evening."

It turned out Dave was a club veteran. "I come here four times a year, " he said. "I just love, good solid puddings. Puddings you can cut."

And did Dave do this sort of thing at home, as well? "No, not so much. My wife's not too keen on puddings."

Suddenly, Sheila's kitchen door flew open and the seven puddings of the evening were paraded and cheered, like victors marching home from bruising encounters with kiwi fruit. As Simon summoned the guests a table at a time to collect the spoils, I studied a gloriously steaming, light brown mound of banana and cinammon, freshly liberated from its four-pint basin. "Best, to eat this, " I thought "before it eats me."

I also did full justice to Sheila's Bread and Butter Pudding, gleaming golden like a Cotswold cottage after a rain shower. The heavy stuff came next.

"Personally, I leave the lighter ones till last, " said Dave. "Then it's just a quick dash to the finish post." Oh dear.

Sussex Pond, a gorgeously glutinous alliance of lemons and sugar, snuggled in its sweaty jacket of suet dough, tumbled to the pit of my stomach with a dull thud that was almost audible. "We fully comply with Government guidelines on dietary health, " bellowed our ruddy-faced MC.

"Just think of all the fruit we're using."

Three hours and seven puddings later, Beacon Hill beckoned.

On the way home I stopped at nearby Winchcombe and came away with a skinned rabbit, 2lb of belly pork, 5lb of Gloucester Old Spot sausages and a pork pie of Dickensian proportions from Browns of North Street, the butcher's shop that time forgot.

One of the joys of the Cotswolds, is that you don't just do puddings.

You go the whole hog.

THE KNOWLEDGE:

Three Ways House (01386 438429/www.threewayshousehotel.com) offers a two-night Pudding Club break, doubles from £198 per night (two sharing), B&B.

Pudding Club (www.puddingclub.com) meetings are held every Friday at 7pm. Cotswolds and Forest of Dean Tourism: 01242 864171/ www.cotswolds.com