ITV may have blown the final whistle on Footballers' Wives, its sex-and-champers soccer-saga, but the series' real-life counterpart can still be tackled in Cheshire. Keep in mind though: this is a county of two halves.

Right, that's enough daft football metaphors. Let's get straight down to breakfast at The White House Manor, a classy, relaxed and unpretentious hotel in the village of Prestbury, a couple of miles north of Macclesfield. As the owner, Ryland Wakeham, brings the toast, the conversation inevitably turns to Posh and Becks, who used to live in nearby Alderley Edge. "Victoria had a birthday party booked at another hotel," says Wakeham. "But there were so many paparazzi following them that David rang us up and said: 'Can you do a table for 15?' So we did."

This is thrilling stuff. My wife and I are sitting in a room once graced by the Antony and Cleopatra of celebrity culture. Prestbury and Alderley Edge are focal points of what locals and publicists call Cheshire's "champagne region", an area of conspicuous wealth and, thanks to long drives and big security gates, inconspicuous footballers and attendant Wags. After Manchester United's Eric Cantona anointed the east side of the county as his home base, Wayne Rooney settled in Prestbury, with Brad Friedel and Wes Brown just up the road.

The area reputedly has more millionaires to the square mile than anywhere else in Britain. Six per cent of houses in England and Wales costing more than £1m are in Cheshire. There are Ferraris and Bentleys at every turn. So is this really the world of Footballers' Wives, a blitz of bling and Botox, where New Money hires personal trainers and frets about breast implants and facelifts? I ring Patrick O'Neill, seasoned editor of the glossy lifestyle magazine Cheshire Life.

"Footballers' Wives? An absolute total cliché," he yawns. "It's a myth created by provincial journalists in London." I say he sounds a little annoyed. "Irritated, amused, bored, but not annoyed."

All the same, he acknowledges a "golden triangle of the Cheshire glitterati" and, pressed for places to spot them, suggests the Grosvenor Hotel in Chester, the Alderley Edge Hotel and the Belle Epoque restaurant in Knutsford,.

O'Neill also describes Cheshire as "the most northern of the Home Counties", which is more like what the tourism people want to hear. "We try to discourage the image of Footballers' Wives and chav mansions," says Barrie Kelly, director of operations for Visit Chester and Cheshire. "Football and the wealth associated with it make a good aspirational image, but it doesn't necessarily give you a reason to visit. You're not going to come and camp out all weekend to see Rio Ferdinand, though there was a David Beckham Tour at one point for a party of Japanese fans."

So there are no plans for a Wayne Rooney Heritage Trail or a Cantona Country rebranding. Instead, Kelly suggests Chester as a starting point for a visit and the rest of Cheshire as a place for pampering, spas, golf, country houses, shopping and "rural escape". Much of this is unfamiliar to outsiders. Kelly admits: "You don't say 'I'm off to Cheshire' like you'd say 'I'm off to the Lake District.'"

You might, of course, say you were off to Chester, a fascinating city, like York with less edge but a similarly inspiring city-wall circuit. But the rest of Cheshire? A few years ago, I joined a narrowboat hotel cruise from Chester. We chugged along the Shropshire Union Canal, past Beeston Castle and up to Middlewich. It was a glimpse of an area of smart and undemanding charm, which I'd hardly known existed. The far east of Cheshire may include some upliftingly dramatic parts of the Peak District, but much of the rest of the county has landscape as comfortable as its lifestyle. The gently rolling hills are dotted with pheasant-filled fields and black-and-white timbered houses with a sense of stockbrokerly security about them.

This reassuring sense of Old Money is offset by Alderley Edge, whose main street bristles with "home cinema system" salesrooms, nail bars offering "anti-ageing hand treatments" and charity shops packed with Max Mara and Ghost.

One off-licence stocks two-dozen champagnes in a padlocked cabinet. "At Christmas we sold £1,800 worth of champagne to one customer," says sales assistant Geoff Parris. "And I've got to ring someone up now to tell him we've got the 24 bottles he ordered."

Champagne corks certainly pop at a nearby restaurant, which is heaving as early as 7.30pm on a Saturday night. As one hen party teeters in and another totters out and personal gold gleams in the candlelight. To an outsider, the village still has a Miss Marple-like charm, with sponge cakes and orange marmalade on sale at the Mothers' Union coffee morning. But there are rumblings about the changes that New Money has brought.

"Land Acquired for a Prestigious Mansion House," proclaims a sign and there's no lack of people ready to complain about decent homes being demolished to make way for £2m "Southfork-style monstrosities".

But we've not come for controversy. We walk along the Edge, a sandstone ridge with sweeping views over the Cheshire plain.

We explore Knutsford, a pleasant little town that feels gift-wrapped for visitors, though its narrow streets burst at the seams with four-wheel drives.

And, late on a sunny afternoon, we discover the beautiful black-and-white timbered church at Lower Peover. In one corner is a memorial to an 18th century member of the Shakerley family:

"She was beautiful without vanity, virtuous without pride, her economy was the happy mean between parsimony and profuseness."

A lesson there for any Wag in an area where extra time would be no penalty.

Where to stay on a visit to Cheshire
The White House Manor, Prestbury (01625 829376, www.thewhitehouse.uk.
com) has doubles from £110 per night.

Tourist information: 01565 632611 (www.visitenglandsnorthwest.com).