The bakery where he earned £6 an hour and the restaurant where he wooed Taylor Swift: As Harry Styles' Cheshire village launches an official tour, locals give the Mail a sneak preview... Welcome to Harrywood!

As left arms go, Graham Blake's is a fairly standard limb, clad today in his stationmaster dark pullover, the sleeves of his blue shirt peeking out from under the cuff.

But to Harry Styles fans — Harries as they are known — it is a thing of beauty, in the same vein as John Lennon's trademark glasses or Elton John's signature rings. This arm, you see, has touched — yes, touched — the great floppy-haired One Direction frontman himself.

'We get fans here from all over the world, from places I've never even heard of. They want to touch the arm that Harry touched, so they can say they've touched someone who has touched Harry Styles,' chuckles 62-year-old Graham, standing in his ticket office next to a life-sized cardboard cutout of the global rock star.

'They ask all sorts of daft questions, like 'What does Harry smell like?' says Graham, who has worked at the station for 23 years. Crikey, what does he tell them?

'I think I told them Lynx — all lads use Lynx, don't they?'

Fans Molly and Laura pose with a cardboard cutout of Harry Styles in W. Mandeville Bakery, where a 14-year-old Styles once swept the floors for £6 an hour each Saturday

Station master Graham Blake poses with a cardboard cutout of Harry. Fans from all over the world visit him so they can say they've touched someone who has touched Harry Styles

Welcome to Holmes Chapel, an unremarkable yet quintessentially English village in the heart of Cheshire, that also happens to be the childhood home of the 30-year-old Grammy winner — and is now a mecca for teenage fans across the world.

In fact, so many of them alight at the station, desperate to visit their idol's former haunts, that local leaders announced this week they will turn the village's walking map into an official guided tour.

Rather aptly, for a singer whose stratospheric rise began when he appeared on the X Factor in 2010, village chiefs plan to hold reality-style auditions to hire expert guides, who, from June, will lead groupies around the key sights.

Today I am being given a preview by Peter Whiers, 67, the retired nuclear engineer and chair of the Holmes Chapel Partnership, who came up with the idea of cashing in on Harry-mania to help safeguard the future of the village he has lived in for 30 years.

Some 5,000 diehard fans have already hot-footed it to Holmes Chapel in the last year alone, and interest, Peter says, has 'gone mad' since news of the tours broke — with TV crews from Spain and France, and even journalists from the New York Times, getting in touch.

'The idea is that we will charge £20 a tour and use the money to support retail and the infrastructure of the village,' he says.

'Last year was dire, what with the cost-of-living crisis people stopped buying luxuries such as coffees and cakes so much, and we had several businesses go bust. If we can do something Harry-related to support them, then that's the aim.'

With 48 million followers on Instagram, Styles may have been born of the social media age, but his fans still crave something tangible — to visit the place where he once worked, chat to someone he once knew, or touch a wall where he once wrote his name. 

Then, of course, they can't resist sharing every detail of their visit under the Holmes Chapel hashtag, which has more than 2,750 posts on TikTok, inspiring yet more visitors.

Harry took former girlfriend Taylor Swift to Fortune City Chinese Restaurant for tea on her 23rd birthday 12 years ago, which is a few doors down from his childhood home

Harry and Taylor shared a brief romance between 2012 and 2013

Peter and I meet at the first stop on the tour, Holmes Chapel Train Station, where most Harries arrive on the twice-hourly trains from Manchester, and stationmaster Graham is greeted like royalty.

Unlike Peter — whose closest brush with the singer is that his daughter once went ten-pin bowling with him when he was first starting out in One Direction — Graham (and his arm) have posed for pictures with the young Styles on the station platform. Footage of the meeting is available on the fan Facebook page Graham runs.

'I can still picture Harry pulling his trolley-dolly behind him, wearing his floppy hat and scarf, as he travelled to and from London during the X Factor live shows,' Graham tells me. And it is this sort of insight he shares with fans who arrive at the station — 25 on average per day —from as far afield as Peru, Argentina, Australia and Mexico.

'They feel privileged to meet someone that knows and has met Harry,' he says. 'Some of them really are in awe when they come in.'

For those able to quell the excitement long enough to grasp a pen there is even a 'Say Hi to Harry' vistors' book they can sign (maximum length four lines).

'Harry isn't just another arrogant pop star. I think people love him because he does care,' Graham explains. 'If you read some of the stories in the visitor book it's clear that a lot of people have been to the edge. They say Harry and his music has brought them back.'

One young fan I met summed up the appeal. 'When you are here you feel the connection, he feels so real,' says Olivia Gouldthorp, a 17-year-old 'Harry-mad' A-level student from Middlesbrough, who is on her third visit to the village. 

Leaving the station we head to stop number two, the Twemlow Viaduct and 'Harry's Wall', so-called because Styles famously wrote his name on the brickwork during the 2013 One Direction documentary This Is Us. He also enjoyed his first kiss at the landmark.

The half-mile walk to the viaduct, across a boggy field that runs alongside the River Dene, has proved challenging for some Harries.

Graham, who tries to warn fans about the Cheshire weather recounts a tale of two Danish girls in white jeans and trainers who returned to the station 'caked in mud'.

Harry, dressed in Mandeville bakery's burgundy branded apron and holding up a white loaf, worked at the bakery when he was 14 years old

'Harry's Wall' at the Twemlow Viaduct where fans leave colourful messages of love and support, written on bricks that wrap around the base of one of the viaduct's 23 arches

'They didn't mind, they were chuffed that they were taking Harry's mud home with them to Denmark,' he laughs.

Peter adds: 'The trouble is, if you are coming here from Peru there is probably not much space in your suitcase for wellies for the mud flats of Holmes Chapel.'

The cross-country route deliberately avoids the busy A535 trunk road — safety concerns were behind the initial decision to start printing maps for fans last year.

Luckily the only hazard we have to contend with is the mud and a trio of feisty cows, who aren't too pleased to see us.

Today it is impossible to pick out Styles' original graffiti, which has been rubbed away or obscured by the colourful messages of love and support, written on bricks that wrap around the base of one of the viaduct's 23 arches. Peter says: 'The wall is like a shrine. Harry is a religion to these fans.'

Certainly, friends Lauren Platt, 20, Beth Barons, 19, Beth Poley, 20, and Isabel Cooper, 20, treat Styles like a deity. They travelled to Holmes Chapel from Stafford, clutching a picture of the pop star depicted as Jesus.

'We're not going to leave it here but we will take some selfies at the wall,' student Isabel says.

'We've been to WH Smith for some chalk pens. I'm going to draw a sunflower because Sunflower, Vol. 6 is my favourite song.'

Olivia, from Middlesbrough, and her friend Lucy Newman, 17, also waded through the mud and dodged the cows to reach the wall today.

'I cry every time I go,' says Olivia. 'There is something so comforting about it, to think that there are other people that feel the same way as you do [about Styles]. When you come here it is just so validating.'

Lucy wrote the date she had seen Styles in concert and 'thank you' onto the brickwork. Olivia said she penned 'you saved my life'.

Asked why, she replies: 'Because when you are our age you go through a lot of hard times, everything is changing, and he makes me feel seen. His music is something I can fall back on. I feel like I know him, even though I don't.'

'It's really personal,' agrees Lucy, who has been a fan since she was four. 'We've grown up with Harry,' she says, reminiscing about the One Direction pyjamas she had when she was at primary school.

From the wall, we re-trace our steps along the river until we reach Macclesfield Road for the third landmark on the tour, W. Mandeville Bakery, where a 14-year-old Styles (now worth £150 million) once swept the floors for the heady sum of £6 an hour each Saturday.

The building, with its old-fashioned Hovis sign on the exterior wall and red telephone box next door, provides the perfect backdrop for overseas fans. They arrive in a steady stream, clutching their iPhones and posting about their visit on social media.

Inside, another cardboard cut-out of Styles, dressed in the bakery's burgundy branded apron and holding up a white loaf, greets selfie-mad fans.

Owner Simon Wakefield, a fourth-generation baker at the family business his grandfather founded in 1900, has been up kneading dough since 3am, but insists he never tires of the Harries.

'The people are all really nice who come here — they want to buy one of our aprons, wooden spoons or jams and chutneys with our name on.

'Last year, when Harry was on tour in the UK, we had people queuing out the door.'

I meet student Laura Mulry, 18, and her friend Molly Bailey, 19, from Walsall, inside the shop.

'A lot of celebrities are so out there, you don't feel close to them because they are so big, they are unrelatable, but Harry just seems so human,' says Laura.

The last stop on the tour takes us past Fortune City Chinese Restaurant, a few doors down from Styles' childhood home, where he took one-time squeeze Taylor Swift for tea on her 23rd birthday, 12 years ago. 

It has been closed for the past eight months because of a family bereavement and Styles' former London Road home — which won't be part of the official tour —is also empty and awaiting new tenants.

One neighbour says: 'Most of the fans that come are very polite but you do get the odd one that tries to come on to the property or looks through the window, which can be upsetting.' Peter agrees. 'They can have 300 girls outside in the summer, literally camping outside. We've got to strike a balance and keep the locals on board as well.'

So far, he says, 38 people have applied for the 15 tour guide jobs on offer. They will be 'auditioned' in spring and expected to answer questions on Styles and tell jokes as part of the selection process.

So will it be the full X Factor blunt feedback?

'I'm not sure I'm as nasty as Simon Cowell,' Peter laughs, before ushering us back down the road towards the station.

Inside, Graham delights us with one final Harry nugget as he tells the story of a conversation he had with the singer's father, Des, a few weeks ago.

'He came and took five visitor books for Harry's 30th birthday [on February 1], because he wanted them to give to his son as a present. He said to me: 'What can I get him, he's 30 and he has everything already?'

Maybe next year he'll buy him a ticket for a guided tour.