IN AN old cattle barn above Castleton, in the Peak District, Dave Golubows pulls on a rubber glove and invites me to dip his nipples in chocolate. As you can tell, this isn’t a normal Travel assignment.

There was a time when the only things dipped at Mam Farm were sheep. Today, Dave and his partner, Bridget Joyce, are dunking nuggets of strawberry-daiquiri ganache into top-grade Fortina chocolate – and I’m helping.

As well as their taste-bud-titillating Nipples of Venus, they make chocolate cavalrymen, ballerinas and goldfish, as well as decadent truffles of every tincture. Their sophisticated bonbons sell to Harvey Nichols, Maison Blanc and the Baftas.

The chocolatiers are not the only unlikely barn-dwellers I meet on my two-day break in the Peak District. There is Rob Evans, a former PE teacher who now brews ale in an owl roost beside Chatsworth House. And Mark Dennison, a sorting-office manager who traded the Royal Mail for royal jelly, and puts on body armour to tend his beehives on the heather uplands.

None of these enterprises was here three years ago, and all have been recruited by a pint-sized pudding-maker called Karen Beresford as attractions on her new foodie tours of the district.

The trips promise to take visitors to meet cottage food producers in their own cottages, and maybe have a dabble in their craft.

“These days, people want to know where their dinner comes from,” Karen tells me. “This is a chance to go down on the farm and see the pride we take in what we do.”

A farmer’s wife, Karen has watched Britain’s “real food” revolution sweep across the Peak. A region whose cuisine once amounted to mutton pies and Bakewell puddings is now sprinkled with artisan bakers, ham-curers and cheese-makers. And, as you drive through the creamy limestone countryside, it’s striking – the farm-shop finger posts in every village, the tearoom menus trumpeting their commitment to local nosh: “Bread from Buxton, ice cream from Wildboarclough, stilton from across the square.”

Their honey, you can bet, hails from Daisybank Apiaries at Newtown, and Karen’s itinerary includes 90 minutes with born-again beekeeper Dennison, getting costumed up and trying your hand.

Like Dave and Bridget, Mark and his wife, Mandy, are self-confessed “Good Lifers”, rat-race refuseniks who have fled town in search of a greener life for their children. Their home is another rescued byre in yet more chocolate-box scenery, and Mark springs out to greet me, lean of ankle and craggy of brow, clad in Lycra leggings and rock-climbing trainers. “Beekeeping is the adventure sport of food tourism,” he beams.

“It’s the most fun and the most dangerous... The best thing about bees? The sting. Otherwise, everyone would have a hive in the garden, and I wouldn’t have a business.”

They are quite vicious, then? “The trouble is,” Mandy cuts in, “when bees sting, they emit a pheromone to attract others to defend the hive. I can always tell when Mark comes home badly stung. You can smell it.”

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