Churchill glares down from the wall at the elderly German gent taking breakfast. At a nearby table in the bay window, I am enjoying a full English cooked breakfast at the Churchill Hotel in York.

One undoubted luxury of travel is the full cooked breakfast. I’m not one to bother with it at home and so given the opportunity by a clearly gifted chef, I indulge. In England, the full cooked breakfast is labelled according to the establishment or locale of indulgence. In the Churchill Hotel, I enjoyed the Full Churchill. In the Cotswolds, I had the Full Cotswolds. In the Peak district I enjoyed the Full Peak. The breakfasts were the same: bacon, sausage, egg, baked beans, fried tomatoes and potatoes with some black pudding. Add copious serves of tea or coffee and it sets up one’s day.

Back to the German. He was travelling alone, stylishly dressed and his strong German accent preceded his entry to the dining room by a couple of lengths. The young hotel staffer placed him at the table directly facing Churchill’s glaring portrait. He endured his breakfast in silence.

Black pudding is an essential part of the full English breakfast, but its ingredients ought to remain anonymous. I suggest that you don’t look them up. Also, when you first attempt it, I suggest you don’t nibble at the edges. Rather, take a good chunk and add a bit of sausage or bacon or egg. It needs to be chewed in conjunction with something else. Anything else will do, really, since everything else tastes better than black pudding. But as a combination, black pudding is like a dark art – it just works.

I have been working through England from Kent, skirting the metropolis of London and then heading north. English roads appear to fall into one of only two categories. They are either multilane motorways carrying enormous volumes of traffic at speed or thin, winding, country lanes carrying enormous volumes of traffic separated by inches. To add spice, the country lanes brush closely by hedges, stone walls and pub corners.

In Berkshire, I stopped for a visit to one of England’s oldest pubs, the 500 year old Shinfield Arms. I stoop to enter the door, and remain stooped given the low ceiling on the ground floor. The joists sag, weary with centuries of supporting the upper floor. Later, I stay at an Inn in the Cotswolds where the floors rise and fall like waves on the sea. How these buildings remain standing is a mystery.

The Cotswolds area in Gloucestershire is famously picturesque. The stonework of the buildings is of a warm yellowish colour, not easily described. The stones themselves are thinner than modern day bricks, the walls are thick and the slate roofs sag with age and a generous covering of moss. It is an area in which real farms continue to function despite the influx of Londoners with weekend retreats clogging the roads with their Range Rovers and nervous tourists in hire cars gripping steering wheels until the whites of their knuckles show. Rolling hills and patchwork fields, some of which are turning golden as summer progresses, conjure images, with justification, of quality produce destined to end up on my breakfast table.

Further north I move into the Peak District of Derbyshire. It is here that the hills become steep, the trees thin to be replaced by bracken and gorse, the clouds sweep past at eye level, and rambling gives way to scrambling. It is something of a national sport in England to don boots, jackets, backpacks and a stout stick and walk for miles in these hills, in the wind, rain, occasional sunshine and among the calls of hawks, curlews and skylarks. When I say walk, I mean struggle. The hills are steep, exposed, rocky and magnificent.

The goose hissed a warning. I had rounded the corner at Barker Tower, beside one of the gates of the famous walled city of York. The stressed goose, doing her best to guide her goslings to safety, didn’t like what she saw when I appeared in front of her family. In the manner popularised by Roman Centurions of times gone by, she took a step towards me and hissed threateningly, “Move along, you!”

Attentive readers will have noted that several weeks ago I was in Istanbul, formerly Constantinople. Constantin, founder of Istanbul, was in York when he was promoted to Emperor of Rome. York has been of strategic importance for ever, placed as it is on the important River Ouse that facilitates travel and trade. It has been walled defensively for millennia. When the Romans occupied the city they built predominantly wooden defences. The Danes took control in the Dark Ages, but it was the Normans who converted the wooden walled defences to the stone walls that remain today. York Minster, the cathedral, was a Norman creation that rivals both Westminster Abbey and the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris for age, size, style and grandeur. Outside York Minster there is a sculpture of Constantin, commemorating his elevation to Emperor in AD 306.

I had not expected to be so hot in York. The weather was fine, the sun shone with a certain sting and the modern city of York functioned at full pace, partly within the old walls and partly without. The York Minster cathedral welcomes tourists in between religious services. It is said that half of all the stained glass in England is in the soaring windows of York Minster. Walking the remains of the City’s walls, the towers of the Cathedral are rarely out of sight.

I am at the northernmost point of my current English exploration. I look further northward towards the highlands. Hadrian’s Wall is no longer a barrier. The highlanders are no longer wild demons. I swap a car for an aeroplane and fly north.