The hidden irony of A Grand Day Out, the animation that launched Wallace and Gromit, is that a 1950s Yorkshireman in search of a cracking wensleydale might just as well have looked for it on the moon.
Wensleydale, like most British cheeses other than cheddar and stilton, was almost destroyed in the postwar drive towards mass production. Fortunately, some of the centuries-old recipes for those lost cheeses were preserved, and a growing number of artisans are starting to make them again, from Wensleydale to Lancashire and Bangor to Ceredigion.
