"Harrison Ford ditched his action man screen image to relax on a canal boat in SHROPSHIRE," the Sun reported disbelievingly today. "The multi-millionaire Raiders Of The Lost Ark hunk spent four days cruising round the countryside with girlfriend Calista Flockhart."

Did you hear that? SHROPSHIRE. Not wild enough to be Wales, too bucolic to be truly part of the West Midlands. No accent to speak of. "For my part, I think the country too far from London, and the scenery nothing special," complains a character in EM Forster's Howard's End. And that was written before the regrettable creation of Telford, one of the deadliest of the post-war new towns.

Forster has a lot to answer for. "Oniton" - which was modelled on the town of Clun - "was up towards the Welsh border, and so difficult of access that he had concluded it must be something special," he continues in another anti-Salopian passage. "A ruined castle stood in the grounds. But having got there, what was one to do? The shooting was bad, the fishing indifferent, and womenfolk reported the scenery as nothing much."

Nothing much? Granted, Shropshire's hills could be a little higher. The Wrekin is distinguished chiefly by its television mast, and Wenlock Edge is, as AE Housman suggested, rather windy. But "nothing much"? Forster obviously never climbed the Stiperstones in winter to stare at the Devil's Chair rock formation, watched the sun set at Ellesmere, or visited the Mitchell's Fold stone circle at dusk.

Ford and Flockhart did well to rent a canal boat. The hotels and restaurants in south Shropshire have improved enormously in the past decade - the Michelin-starred establishments in Ludlow are now too expensive for many locals - but the north is still something of a no-go area, gastronomically speaking. (Earlier this year I spent a three-figure sum on a night in a Shrewsbury hotel. Judging by the reek of stale tobacco, the room's previous occupant had smoked himself to death, the window opened no more than an inch and there was a used razor in the bathroom.)

But it is precisely this backwoods quality that makes the county so appealing. As any local will tell you, the Industrial Revolution began in Shropshire, at Ironbridge. Fortunately, it quickly shifted eastwards to pollute the air and soil of the Black Country and Birmingham. The longest walking route in Shropshire - and one of the most beautiful - follows a ditch excavated 1200 years ago by Offa, the king of Mercia.

Then there are the decrepit old castles lining the Welsh border: Caus, Clun, Brockhurst, Shrawardine, all of them unpoliced and largely ignored by visitors. There is Viriconium, the fourth largest Roman city in Britain, sadly mostly unexcavated, and the peat bogs of the north.

Not long ago, Shrewsbury's tourist board made an unfortunate foray into the heritage market with the launch of the "Brother Cadfael trail". The fictional brother, who is the hero of a series of detective novels set in the town, was celebrated in a series of exhibits illustrating the life of an elderly, celibate monk in the Middle Ages. It tanked.

And that's why Ford and Flockhart chose Shropshire for their holiday. The only pity is that the locals decided to spoil their privacy by shopping them to the Sun. Don't go, for God's sake. The last thing the county needs is a Shropshire Lad memorial centre.

· Ros Taylor grew up just north of Shrewsbury.