The battle for Dole Acre - Ian Marchant

After throwing a tin of pineapples at his boss's head, TV superchef Terry Whittaker runs away from London, failed love and a dying father, and arrives in the sleepy old city of Pancester to open his own restaurant. Pancester is slow to change and clings to its medieval traditions and seventies fashions. But now change is being forced on the city as the council wish to build a car park on the Dole Acre Donkey Sanctuary. Whittaker tries to stop the woman he loves, or rather stalks, from developing the site and finds that he has some strange allies: not least a field full of raving hippies, desperate to save England's finest magic mushroom field. With guest appearances from the Time Team gang, the renowned expert on the world's rarest snail, a sinister individual called Q, and the largest ancient priapic temple ever found, The Battle for Dole Acre is a dazzlingly funny novel with enormously popular appeal.