Joe McNamee: Learning how to eat the Wicklow way

"Postcard-pretty villages and towns could as easily slot into the English country landscape, especially those still bearing archaeological hallmarks of our colonial past in a county that once bordered the Pale."

Tom Burgess is a farmer-turned-cheesemaker in west Wicklow, who makes Coolattin Cheddar.

I had always thought if Rural Ireland were to be given a stand in Brown Thomas, Wicklow would be the county awarded the concession. 

Visually, it is markedly different to the rest of the country, almost manicured in comparison to the claggy bogland of the midlands or the blasted wild uplands of the Western seaboard — not for nothing is it known as the ‘Garden of Ireland’.