I

t may be tucked away in a corner of St Oswald’s churchyard, but finding The Grasmere Gingerbread Shop is a piece of (ahem) cake. Just follow your nose and the wonderful aroma of freshly baked biscuits will lead you to the tiny shop, where more than six customers constitutes a queue.

Back in the early 1800s this was the village school (where one William Wordsworth was one of the teachers), but in 1850 Sarah Nelson set up it up as a gingerbread bakery, using a secret recipe that’s now kept locked away in the National Westminster Bank in Ambleside.

These security measures may seem over the top but we’re not joking; Jamie Oliver has described the gingerbread here as “the best I’ve ever eaten”, and famous customers include Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.

Today, deliveries are shipped all over the world and the Lakeland delicacy has become popular with brides as wedding favours, because of ginger’s aphrodisiac properties. No wonder people are so keen to sample some...