1986 Marjorie and Sam High St CS outside shop

1986 Marjorie and Sam High St CS outside shop, a photo by HOBBS HOUSE bakery on Flickr.

Finding myself in new pastures, last Saturday I did all my food shopping in Chipping Sodbury, home of Hobbs House bakery. I can happily confirm that it is totally possible to shop locally at independents in Sodbury too. I managed to buy all I needed for an epic weekend of family feasting in one pretty circuit. Obviously I started in the Bakery with bread, there we also sell cream and milk and an obligatory coffee to drink whilst shopping. Next stop was the Hobbs House butchery, where my eagerly anticipated, well hung rib of beef was waiting for me. I also bought all the ingredients to make a pate (a more normal person could just buy their pate from Henry & Jolly Alan), some cheese, butter, eggs and a slider from outside. On Saturday’s a grill is set up outside where we bought our sliders, a perfectly pink burger in one of Hobbs Houses new ultimate burger baps.
We then purchased some birthday presents from the gift shop on the corner where there is a lovely selection of reasonably priced delights. Then we headed down to Ian’s for his fine selection of fruit and veg. It took my intrepid four year old daughter to find his ‘out the back room’, amazing, stacked high of all the dry goods you could possibly need - in our case hundreds and thousands and dishwasher salt. The service in Ian’s is great, cheery and helpful, they wouldn’t even let me carry my box of goodies to the car outside.
The only thing left on the shopping list was anchovies. Just as I was thinking Sodbury was going to fail me I whizzed to Hamptons where they were thrilled to offer me two types of anchovies. Wherever my lively gaggle stopped to buy, the service was really enjoyable and the quality inspires me to write, cook and share, all at very good value. AND there were plenty of shops that I didn’t get to try.
My plea to you is, don’t just use your local High Streets, before you lose them, encourage your friends and families to use and enjoy them too.