My country memories: Cherie Lunghi

'I always wanted a dog when I was growing up, but living in a city flat made it impossible for us to have one. I have family in Northumberland, and one year my mum and I went on a trip to Bamburgh. We stayed in a small bed and breakfast where the owners had a beautiful black and white Collie, which I befriended along with two of the girls from the village. We spent every day together, sliding down the sand dunes on the beach, with our hair strewn across our faces. It was a time of great freedom and joy. I'm city born and bred, and our chances to escape to the countryside were limited as mum didn't have a car, so seeing the sea was always a real treat - and, of course, for that week on holiday in Bamburgh it felt like I had my very own dog.

'My first job in repertory theatre after leaving drama school was in Newcastle. I had an old Morris Minor back then, and every Sunday morning my friends from the theatre company and I would pile into my little car and drive out of the city and up through the countryside to Bamburgh to have a picnic. We'd go whatever the weather and normally end up eating in the car with rain beating down on the windscreen. To this day, it is still one of my favourite places.

'When I was in my twenties, I was with the Royal Shakespeare Company in Stratford-upon-Avon. I chose to live outside Stratford at the top of a high hill overlooking the vale of Evesham, where I rented a cottage in an old orchard for six months. It was my first real experience of rural life and to begin with I was terrified of coming back from the show in the dark. When I arrived home from the theatre, I would run from the car to my front door in the pitch black. But, as I got used to the starlight and the sound of owls hooting, I grew to love it.

'I was there during the famous hot, dry summer of 1976. Everything was so parched and yellow that Warwickshire looked like the African plains, but it was a glorious heat. I became completely immersed in the country lifestyle - I began making plum jam and chutney, baking my own bread and even making goat's cheese from milk that I had bought on a nearby farm. All the actors in the company did the same, so there was a big exchange of jam recipes between us. There was a field just outside my kitchen door, and I used to get up very early in the morning and collect mushrooms there, before the sheep got into the field and ate them all.

'With the results of my foraging, I'd cook myself mushrooms with fresh rosemary on toasted brown bread that I'd made myself - it was simply delicious. I went for long walks across the fields, eating apples from trees and berries from the bushes I found along the way.

'We ate only locally grown produce during that time, and I used to get my eggs from an old lady who lived in a Georgian house with original flagstones on the floor. I'd pop down to say hello and walk away with a dozen fresh eggs from her hens. I would buy all my vegetables from the farm shop at the side of the road, too - they always had such great flavour. Because everything was right there on my doorstep there was never any need to drive to a supermarket, and buying locally meant that I also got to know the local community.

'I learnt so much from my rural experience that I will never forget. My landlord had a lovely gardener called Fred, who was a real Warwickshire man, like a character from a D.H. Lawrence novel. Fred was wonderfully patient and would teach me all about growing vegetables. I learnt that beans grew on plants, and it was the first time I had ever seen a carrot come out of the ground complete with all its green foliage.

'Fred had a thick Warwickshire accent and a catalogue of country sayings. One in particular sticks in my mind: "If the oak comes before the ash, expect a splash; but if the ash comes before the oak, expect a soak". I loved those rural observations. For a city girl it was so enriching.'

Cherie Lunghi is a television, theatre and film actress, most recently starring in Casualty 1909. She is an ambassador for the Fairtrade chocolate company, Divine, www.divinechocolate.com. 

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