Project 60 - Number 11 - Afternoon Tea

This was a  while ago and something that I shared with my sister while I was staying with her back in June.

Obviously it wasn't just any afternoon tea, or it would hardly qualify. It's not as though I'm a stranger to the concept of going out for afternoon tea. No, what made this special was the location. 

Many years ago, when I was 'untimely ripp'd' from the place of my birth and the whole family decamped to Gloucestershire from County Durham we had a stream of family visitors and soon established a sort of Best of the Cotswolds Tour Versions 1 and 2 which they were all taken on.

 

Very early on, when we were visiting the beautiful, of somewhat touristy, village of Broadway we went past The Lygon Arms, where a board advertised afternoon tea at £5 a head. (Bear in mind that this was in the late 1960s). My mother was horrified. Where someone else might think 'That must be really special, I wonder how good it is?' her reaction was 'Who in their right mind would pay £5 for afternoon tea?' and it has to be said that in those days £5 was a lot of money.

 

For a long time now I've wondered how much The Lygon Arms was currently charging for afternoon tea and how good it would be, so when I made my plans to spend some time with my sister, who still lives nearby, a trip to try it out was popped onto the Project 60 list.

 

We had a lovely afternoon wandering round Broadway and rootling in some of the extremely nice shops that are to be found there before repairing to The Lygon Arms for tea. The answers to my questions turned out to be £20 and not as good as all that.

 

The building itself is old and quaint and lovely, although we were rather startled by the fact that water started to drip down loudly into the fireplace from three separate spots while we were eating. I was surprised that the only choice we were given regarding what we drank was tea or coffee; I'd anticipated being given a choice of various teas. One of my sandwiches still retained some of the crust and they were made from ordinary sliced loaves. But the scones were nice and as you can see above there was plenty of choice when it came to the cakes.

 

Overall then,  I was slightly underwhelmed. But it was never the case that everything on the list had to be brilliant. And this wasn't, but I'm still glad we did it.