Afternoon tea

Took my family on a trip to Ely town, a small place near the famous city of Cambridge.

In Ely we found a tea-room which has been chosen as the ‘Best Tea-room in Britain, 2007.’ It was in a very green area right next to a beautiful river. There were weeping willow trees nearby and the Muscovy ducks who live by the river had just had lots of babies so there were about 20 little yellow ducklings running all over the place, and the children were so happy to see them. So this is the best place in Britain to have afternoon tea.

I was sure there would be a very long queue for afternoon tea, so I thought we would avoid the queue and have lunch there. So we had afternoon tea for lunch!

Fortunately this tea-room also serves sandwiches, soup and salad so we could have a nice lunch, and afternoon tea became the dessert. There were about forty different teas to choose from. We had a pot of the regular ‘House Blend’ tea, which was excellent (no tea-bags here!) and another pot which was spicy and flowery, also really delicious. The scones were very good, but I chose to eat summer pudding, a pudding made from fresh summer fruits: raspberries, strawberries, blackberries, blackcurrants, redcurrants and probably some other fruit too. And with clotted cream it was scrumptious.

I spoke with the owner, he was very friendly even though he was busy, and he told me that winning the award as best tea-room had really helped his business and now he was always full at week-ends.

We went past later in the afternoon and the queue was so long, though it was such a beautiful day that no-one seemed to mind.