Pretty perfect

We are in Thornton Hough, a village on Wirral, or The Wirral as I’ve always called this wedge-shaped peninsula between Liverpool and North Wales. With its village green, smithy and faultlessly pretty timbered houses, it looks like a pantomime backdrop of an idealised Merrie England. At any moment, Dick Whittington could stride round the corner and slap his thighs.

The Mrs Hunnibun signs point to the parish hall. We push open the door... and what a heartening scene of community life greets us. The place is packed – 60 or so people, whole families, four generations, sitting round tables with gingham cloths, talking and laughing, eating and drinking. Mrs Hunnibun’s, it turns out, isn’t a shop. It’s the parish hall’s monthly coffee morning.

At one end is a trestle table piled high with home bakes of a superior sort. Not merely chocolate cake, but “Double Chocolate Orange Cake”. And buns, meringues, Eccles cakes. I scribble details in my notebook. “Excuse me,” says one of the ladies in pinnies behind the trestle table. “Are you the Public Health man?”

Mrs Hunnibun isn’t a real person, but the name was reckoned cosy, homely and welcoming. Which you might say about Wirral itself, particularly the wealthier western side, with its narrow winding roads, its glades and its spruce villages with thatched cottages complete with rambling roses.

We take it all in at the start of our weekend by climbing Thor’s Rock, a sort of miniature sandstone Ayers Rock in heathland near the village of Thurstaston. At 300ft it’s not high, but in Wirral terms it’s Himalayan.

There’s a grand panorama from the top. On one side, Liverpool stretches across the far bank of the Mersey. On the other, the River Dee shimmers, Snowdonia looms blue-grey in the background, and the Welsh coast stretches as far as... well, it’s a misty afternoon, but on a previous visit I’m sure I could see the Great Orme at Llandudno, 40 miles away.

The Wirral coast here includes Britain’s first country park (opened in 1973, good for walking) and, a few miles inland, there’s Ness Botanic Gardens with 60 acres of attractive winding paths.

A visiting group of Dutch gardeners train their cameras on a cyclamen and snap away like paparazzi. No stamen is safe. In the gardens’ pavilion, the award-winning Roses Tea Rooms have a pretty pink and white ice-cream colour scheme, and delicious cinnamon toast and camomile flower tisane.

We’re staying just outside Thornton Hough, at Mere Brook House, a superb five-star country house B&B with an oak-panelled lounge, a sociable house party atmosphere and an open invitation to help yourself to food and drink from the kitchen. Which we don’t need to do after dinner at the highly-rated Cowshed restaurant at the Wheatsheaf pub in the village of Raby – fine food served with great friendliness and without fuss. Our weekend’s other dinner is at Sheldrakes, a busy shoreline restaurant in Lower Heswall with immaculate service and a chance to register just how unexpectedly wealthy this part of the world is.

Back at Mrs Hunnibun’s, I finish my Eccles cake (no, no, this isn’t all about food) and we drive down to Parkgate, a resort so tiny that it’s hard to find. Yet it could have been Liverpool.

During the 18th century it was the main English port for Ireland, and the last glimpse of England for many emigrants to America. Lady Hamilton, Nelson’s mistress, lodged here and Handel reputedly put the finishing touches to the Messiah here before sailing to Dublin for the premier. Hallelujah for Parkgate!

Things are quieter now. A grey heron stalks the marsh, black-headed gulls swoop, shops sell fresh potted shrimps and home-made fudge and there are adverts for a forthcoming talk: “Sundials and why they don’t tell the right time”.

We’ve planned to walk across the sands to Hilbre Island, a nature reserve a mile offshore at the top end of Wirral, not far from Hoylake and its golf. Tide charts have been my bedtime reading for weeks. In the event, the rain starts, so we drive, out of curiosity, to Birkenhead and are amazed by Hamilton Square, as impressive as any Georgian square in Edinburgh or Dublin.

Almost inevitably we end up at Port Sunlight. Like Thornton Hough, this garden village was built by Lord Leverhulme, who made his fortune with Sunlight soap and used it to give his workers lovely houses to live in.

The result is suburban heaven, sometimes mock-Tudor, sometimes Arts and Crafts, a treasurable time-warp of order and design – and no litter. There’s an engaging museum telling the village’s story, just across from the Lady Lever Art Gallery, arguably Britain’s finest small gallery. It has Turners and Constables and half the Pre-Raphaelite canvases you’ve ever heard of, including Millais’s Bubbles, which became the world’s most celebrated soap advert (for Pears).

The plush new Leverhulme Hotel has named its champagne bar “Bubbles”. Ah, after the picture, I say. He looks blank. “Oh,” he says. “I thought it was after Michael Jackson’s chimp.”

Mere Brook House (07713 189949; www.merebrookhouse.co.uk) has double rooms from £80 a night, including breakfast. Wirral tourist info on 0151 666 3188; www.visitwirral.com.