Thanks for all the feedback. So many people to reply to on this thread, but yours stood out and if I'm ever in Cornwall, I will give you a shout. I travel west down the 303 quite regularly, but usually only to Devon for work purposes. Yes, despite being mid forties and being a smoker for 30 years, I'm not that well connected. I do have a small grow op. At the moment, I am planting an auto seed every 4-5 weeks, so I only ever have one plant in flower and it goes so fast once harvested. I need to graduate from CFL to HPS, but I only have a wardrobe available. (floor space approx 90x45cm) I figure a 400W HPS would enable me to do a small SOG. It would be lovely to get my hands on a legendary strain some time.
I've been buying gear off the this person (who I got this off) for years and it's always been reasonable if not outstanding. It smells a lot less unpleasant in small quantities. The smell in an ounce bag was very strong, but with a bit of exposure to air, it mellows out. The soapy taste was more probably more pronounced because I had not smoked weed with that flavour profile for a while and had been smoking some sort of cheese before this came along, but now I've had a few, the taste is quite familiar and not concerning. I think the boot polish smell (when smelt in quantity), is actually the Tea Tree oil smell. How about Neem oil? I've not smelt it, but I know people use it to control spider mite. Does that smell similar to tea tree? If not, maybe the strain just has a similar turpene profile to tea tree or perhaps tea tree has been used for pest control.
I've just found this thread which perhaps solve the mystery.
https://www.rollitup.org/t/tea-tree-marijuana-miracle.651619/
Perhaps it has just been sprayed with a mix of soap and tea tree? I sprayed the soil only of my Auto Silver Bullet with a mixture of cinnamon esseintial oil and soapy water, but it didn't affect the taste of the bud at all. Perhaps whoever grew this sprayed the whole plants although I know when I made that mistake once, I totally fucked up the plant. It didn't kill it, but it never looked right after and I put it out of its misery.
Ah well just a couple of weeks away from smoking Himalaya Blue Diesel and a little while after, hopefully some Auto Northern Light.