Exercising with chocolate: Festival and tours galore

A choc-a-block affair

If you work in Blighty's capital and fancy a stroll with chocolate after a day’s hard grind, then Chocolate Ecstasy Tours have the Evening Chocolate ramble, which happens one Thursday a month from 6pm.

Chocolate Ecstacy Tour: Montezuma, Brighton

The Brighton tour lasts around three hours including a mile walk and a short taxi ride to Hove to get to the final venue. Tickets cost £33 per person with a maximum number of 12 people per jaunt. More info from Chocolate Ecstasy Tours.

Beyond the capital, Great British Tours also run chocolate outings in Oxford and Edinburgh. The Oxford tour runs on Saturdays at 3pm and lasts around two hours, and the Edinburgh walkabout takes place on Saturdays and Sundays from 3pm.

The Oxford tour starts at Hardy's Sweet Shop in Oxford's historical high street. The route takes in four other venues before ending up at the Fudge Kitchen, which still make fudge by hand on marble slabs with some recipes dating back to 1830. While it's fair to say that 185 years is impressively old for a recipe, some of the places on this choc safari map date back much further than that.

Enticing chocolate bars from Hotel Chocolat

The premises, now occupied by Patisserie Valerie, dates back to 1612. While No.132 High Street, the location of Hotel Chocolat, was built in the 15th Century. If you feel the need for some culture, the tour ends just a five-minute walk away from Oxford’s world-famous Ashmolean Museum.

The Edinburgh tour begins at Patisserie Valerie on Rose Street, a thoroughfare infamous for the so-called Rose Street Challenge – a drinking game that involves making your way along the road and stopping in every pub, bar and restaurant along the way to neck some delicious booze. The tour also takes in Coco's Chocolate, home of one of Scotland's first chocolatier’s, which specialises in ethically-traded organic chocolate.

If you happen to like a wee dram, then the finishing point for the tour is about a five-minute walk away from Royal Mile Whiskies – one of the best specialist single malt retailers around.

The Chocolate Festival, this weekend … tempted?

If walking around from place to place to get your fix seems a bit too much like hard work, then there’s always the Chocolate Festival at the Business Design Centre in London from 27 to 29 March – yes, this weekend – and again on 4 to 6 December. More mouthwatering festival info here. ®