Consumers across the UK will be urged to get back to their butcher as part of a UK-wide week of promotion.

National Butchers' Week (March 10 - 16) aims to raise awareness of the high street butcher among those consumers who might have forgotten where good meat comes from. Butchers have seen their numbers dwindle over the past 10 years, but now the ones who are left are at the top of their game and ready to dazzle consumers with their knowledge and skill.

The week, featuring the slogan Support Your Local Butcher, is organised by trade magazine Meat Trades Journal and is aimed at encouraging consumers back across the threshold of their local butcher.

Stuart Higginson will be backing the campaign from his shop in Grange over Sands. The meat travels a short distance to his shop but some customers regularly make a 100 mile round-trip to buy it - rather ironic given the focus on reducing food miles.

But it is the fact that the meat travels such a short distance that loyal customer Margaret Crisp likes about Stuart's business.

"It's quality - you know where the meat comes from."

And she finds it reassuring that the names of suppliers are publicised in the shop.

Margaret added: "Stuart does such beautifully presented kitchen-ready products that I often take items down to my daughter in Worcestershire."

Stuart told the Gazette: "Sometimes I have six to eight customers in my shop in a morning who have each made a round-trip of more than 50 miles, in some cases up to 100 miles. It's just because we're a high street butcher, and where they come from there are none. They make it a day out."

Stuart is too modest to mention that another reason why many customers make the effort to travel to him is that his shop is an award winner - he was the very first national champion of the Butcher's Shop of the Year Awards.