Guest reviewer: Jim Petts

To tell you the truth I don’t remember this scone too clearly except that it was a life-saver. I was taken over all peculiar in an antiques shop in Corbridge, possibly due to low sugar level, and needed an instant injection of scone-related product. This we found just down the road at Truffles Tea Rooms.

A pleasant small town classic tea-shop doing all the good things that pleasant small town classic tea-shops do, including a range of scone types including this classic. Not exceptional, just a good standard classic scone, served up with a blob of butter (no clotted cream) and good standard strawberry jam. For restorative reasons, and because it was morning, I had a cup of coffee with it. Quite satisfying and just what was needed. After ingesting, we went on our way much improved.

Shuttleworth - interesting place - there’s the Shuttleworth Collection of old planes, the Swiss Garden, a Bird of Prey Centre and some kind of play area - all a bit random, all in the grounds of a big house that isn’t open like a stately home, but I think you can hire it for weddings.

The tearoom/restaurant is in the main visitor entrance building semi-detached to the gift shop and serves all the various attractions. This means it’s also accessible to people not visiting the attractions, but does also mean it features uninspiring views over a gravel carpark.

Tea in a pot, with a jug of milk, which you fill youself, so you get plenty, china cup and saucer - I got two cups of tasty tea.

The scone was oddly flat, as you can see from the pic and had a slightly catering look to it, but it was much tastier than it looked, with a fresh moist texture and plenty of fruit. The prepackaged clotted cream was more than generous and yummy. Jam was in a carton, too, but I was offered a choice of blackcurrant or strawberry. Strawberry, of course, is the only sensible choice. It was Robinsons - a good old reliable. Nothing special, but did the job.

Not a bad tea, of a supermarket restaurant kind of standard, not really something you’d make a special trip for.

£3.85 - definitely on the high side for what you got.

Guest Reviewer: Jim Petts

Not exactly a cream tea, but highly relevant. We attended upon the Town Mill Bakery at Lyme Regis for the elevenses. This is something of a local institution: as well has purveying a splendid selection of bread-based product, they also provide an amazing eating experience based on long trestle tables, large mugs of beverages and a variety of comestibles to suit the hour of the day. Being eleven-ish, toast, muffins etc were on offer, and also the amazing gigantic Jurassic Scone. This came in two types, the plain and fruit, and both were huge. In fact a couple of these kept the writer in calories until 7:00 in the evening without fretting. The scones are available on a help-yourself basis and you position same on a small rectangular plank (a veritable square meal). The trestle tables were supplied with large dishes of butter and apricot jam. Pots are for wimps. The scones were excellent in texture in taste, coming fresh from the oven. The size was slightly intimidating, and this would not be the way forward for purveyors of cream teas for sound economic reasons. The apricot jam is not quite in accordance with Small Pleasures Guidelines, but for the elevenses experience worked remarkably well.

For this excellent interesting gastro-experience, the scones were £1 each take-away, £2 eat-in, but with access to unlimited butter and jam. –>

This time I went for the official cream tea on offer, so got two scones rather than the one I normally go for. So the price is a bit more.

The tea was all in order, cup and saucer, tea in a pot and milk in a jug. Nicely provided with an extra pot of hot water for topping up purposes. Top touch. Ooo, it was lovely, a nice cup of tea.

The scones themselves, were damn fine, lovely home-made texture with a hint of crunch to the outside and a lovely moist centre, not too fluffy, not too doughy. Nice cream, but the portion a little stingy for two scones.

The jam however, was a disaster. It all looked good - in a mini-glass jar - not homemade, but the glass jar stuff is usually ok. It was supposed to be strawberry, but the only way you’d know was by reading the label. On opening the jar, I could pour liquid out onto the scone, then the ‘jam’ inside was a weird translucent flabby jelly that had never seen a strawberry. The flavour was citric. Nasty stuff.

Please note scone-servers of Baddesley Clinton - get a better jam supplier to do your scones some justice!

£4.35 - but that’s for two (count ‘em!) scones. –>

Scone was fruited, decent texture, served with a mini pot of jam and a couple of pats of anchor butter. Which all sounds fine, but it was lacking in flavour somehow.

Tea - well that’s another thing altogether. Only nasty paper cups available, no real milk, only the unpleasant miniature cartons of ‘milk with non-milk fat’ which apparently ‘tastes like real milk’. Pah! And how much do they charge for just one cup of this sacreligious brew? £1.60. Bloody Nora.

£3.90 - far too much for what you get.

–>