TRUTH be told, I didn’t want to write this review. My reason for this was purely selfish. I’d discovered a secret in deepest Dorset and I wanted it to stay that way.

Luckily for you my conscience got the better of me and I decided that where credit is due it should be given... on this occasion to the Bull in Wimborne St Giles.

For those of you who haven’t visited this quintessentially English village, I’d advise you to do so – it’s gorgeous, peppered with a handful of beautiful old buildings. The antiquated houses make you nostalgic for a bygone era you never knew, while the old village stocks point towards the darker, less fanciful side of our history.

When I visited this slice of English heritage last week, it was surely at its most beautiful.

As the spring sunshine spilled across the village, birds sang and two words came to mind – “beer garden”.

Sitting on the rickety old picnic benches (all part of the charm) in the Bull’s garden, my girlfriend and I sipped our drinks and gazed across the village.

Opposite the pub is a fenced-off field, the other side of which sits a row of houses.

How annoying, I thought, to live right opposite your local, but have to walk the long way round to get there. That was until it dawned on me that the occupants live a damn sight closer to the pub than I do – how I envy them.

Feeling peckish we had a gander at the menu and decided it would be rude not to order lunch.

Offering the likes of crispy goat salad and Dorset snails, the menu, which changes daily, was adventurous and original so we felt a tad boring ordering the fish and chips and the minute steak with chips.

Considering it was the first sunny Saturday I could remember, the pub was relatively quiet, so our food didn’t take long to arrive.

Garnished with a handful of rocket each, the dishes were colourful and carefully presented – especially the chunky chips, which were stacked on top of each other like Jenga blocks. Shame there weren’t more of them though – come on chef, the recession’s over.

Chip portions aside, there was nothing to grumble about and what we were eating was simple food, cooked beautifully.

Oozing with juice, the minute steak had a gorgeous flame-grilled flavour, while the unspecified fish was perfectly cooked inside its crispy batter. The token greenery (rocket) added an unexpected character to the dishes, which surprisingly didn’t have a premium price tag – £9.50 for the steak, £7 for the fish.

And that was the brilliant Bull… now the cat’s out the bag.