Independent

A week ago M&S were selling Kentish cherries at £5 a kilo, as noticed at reference 1. They turned out to be fine.

Today we visited a large vegetable garden which operates a small shop and which this morning was selling cherries picked earlier at Godshill, less than ten miles away by road, for £5 a pound. The cherries looked ripe enough, but a fair number were not perfect, damaged even. Nevertheless, they mostly tasted OK, but they were not as good as those from M&S. Which all goes to show that a small independent has a tough time trying to match the big stores on either quality or price.

And about a mile up the road there was a large Tesco's, probably the same sort of size as our Sainsbury's back at Kiln Lane, Epsom, with plenty of parking and a modest selection of good looking cherries at around £3 a pound. Much larger selection of baked beans and sliced bread.

PS: the small shop cherries were sold stalk free, unlike the big stores which sell their cherries with stalks on. As a child, the drill was to pick cherries with a small pair of cherries. This way you did not damage the cherry by pulling the stalk out or the tree by pulling the stalk off, taking a small chunk of tree with it. Bad news as wounds in cherry trees often get infected. I shall interrogate the next cherry farmer I come across about this - not as silly as it seems, as we actually met a young cherry farmer selling cherries, foreign cherries as it happened, on a Kentish roadside not so long ago.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/07/m-cherries.html.