First non-supermarket shopping trip

The town of Chesterfield is many things. Friendly. Historic. Conveniently situated. Cobbled. Crooked (in reference of course to the spire - not the inhabitants). But few people would call it a hotbed of experimental cuisine or international flavours.

Set in north Derbyshire, by the South Yorkshire border, it's residents are very much 'meat-and-two-veg' people and the ability to rustle up a mean Yorkshire pudding or Bakewell tart is firmly ingrained in the DNA. But when my other half added Italian cured meat and fresh basil to my shopping list I suspected I might be in trouble.

Nevertheless I set out to Chesterfield's market on Saturday morning with high hopes and could not have picked a better day to get my bearings; the weather was unseasonably warm and the sun was shining.

I would love to describe the market as bustling but with the average shopper well into their twilight years I'm afraid that wouldn't be quite accurate. Pensioners seldom bustle. But there were certainly plenty of people out doing their shopping.

I'd imagined sauntering round, taking photographs, jotting down names and mentally marking out the best places to shop for future reference. But hopefully our trainee reporters (I work at a newspaper) won't be reading this because almost immediately any semblance of journalistic training went out of the window as I became weighed down with shopping bags, disorientated (I have my mother's sense of direction) and jostled at every turn by those little tartan bags on wheels so favoured by the over 65s.

There is a reason those bags are so popular though. Without a shopping trolley I ended up returning to the car halfway through to relieve my aching arms and dump some bags in the boot.

But despite the unfamiliar terrain I soon started ticking things off my list and enjoying myself. I found two little wholefood shops on a cobbled back street which sold interesting teas, locally-milled flour and vegetarian delights. I visited Chesterfield's excellent cheesemonger Davidson R P Cheese Factors and got much more mozzarella for my money than I would have in the supermarket. And I found an independently-run bargain store absolutely teaming with excited pensioners (you could barely move without tripping over one of those tartan trolleys) where I picked up some cut-price tinned tomatoes.

In a bakery I was delighted to find breadcakes actually labelled as breadcakes. A breadcake, for those not from the Chesterfield/Sheffield area, is what you might know as a bap, a batch, a cob or a bun. The supermarkets, of course, do not make any allowances for the quirks of regional dialect so they have left us all, despite what we grew up with, calling them bread rolls. To take my two packs of breadcakes to the till and have the cashier actually ring them through as breadcakes filled me with such joy that I promptly sidestepped into a shelf of sausage rolls, dropped my purse and then reversed into yet another pensioner. I've been smiling over my sandwiches all weekend at the memory.

At the market place I almost lost my nerve - so many people shouting, so many things to look at and an etiquette completely baffling to the uninitiated. I sidled up to a vegetable stand and the stall-holder eyed me suspiciously. What was the form? Should I touch the veg? Or wait for him to help? After gingerly stroking a couple of red peppers he realised I was a virgin and came to my aid, deftly weighing what I needed in a diamond-shaped bowl and handing me my produce in brown paper bags.

One of the most heartening things to see was the way people were interacting. Customers new the names of the shopkeepers and stallholders, and vice versa. People were smiling and joking, taking time to browse or stop to chat. And as a newcomer I was warmly welcomed wherever I went.

All-in-all things were going well, but I'd still not found cured meat or fresh basil. I ventured into a butchers (never a pleasant experience for a vegetarian) and asked if he had any pepperoni.

"Not in here love, try Tesco," came the reply.

I explained my new resolution to avoid shopping in supermarkets for the year and an older colleague stuck his head out from the back of the shop, where he'd been working, to bellow a hearty "Good for you love". I was pointed to a shop round the corner that specialised in cooked meat, but in there it was the same story. There was boiled ham, roast ham and roast chicken, but nothing cured.

The two rosy-cheeked ladies behind the counter looked baffled when I explained what I wanted.

"Only placed I can suggest is Tesco," one of them said.

I explained my resolution and was again greeted with praise. Indeed everywhere I went people seemed excited and encouraged by what I was trying to do, but when asked where to find pepperoni or fresh basil the response was always the same - try Tesco. It seemed that while there was an active dislike for the big supermarkets among shopkeepers, they apparently all resorted to the supermarkets themselves when in need of anything out of the ordinary.

What I actually needed was a good deli but after spending another 20 minutes wandering the streets I gave up the hunt, bought my boyfriend a tasty-looking chocolate cupcake from a stall by way of compensation, and headed back to the car. 

Checking the time I was quite impressed to see that the trip had taken 90 minutes, which is around the same time as I would normally have spent in the supermarket. Admittedly I'd had to pay £1.60 to park, and I'd certainly overdone it in terms of what I could carry. I think the most successful way of shopping local might be to do it little and often, rather than saving a list for the weekend. But I definitely enjoyed the trip much more than traipsing around the supermarket and also felt confident that the experience would improve further as I got to know the shops and stallholders.

On my way home I called into our local garden centre in a last-ditch attempt to find the elusive fresh basil. After trawling the herbs section without success I went to ask one of the staff if they had any.

"Sorry love, it's too early in the season," she said. "The only place you'll find it right now is Tesco."

With a wry smile I thanked her and headed back out to the car.