Sunday, May 23, 2010

Grantchester

A few weeks ago my friend and I took a walk over to Grantchester, a small town about an hour's walk from Cambridge. The walk there was possibly the most idyllic English scene you could imagine. Big fields full of wildflowers and fluffy grass:
cute little wooden gates:
and cows, people, adorable, brown, cows:Our destination was The Orchid tearoom. The house began serving tea in 1879 and has been catering to Cambridge students and local residents ever since. Poet Rupert Brook lived there, and the place was also frequented by Virginia Woolfe, E.M. Forester, Bertrand Russel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and John Maynard Keynes, among others. So, the place has history, atmosphere, and of course, tea.

You order your tea inside, at a sort of buffet line, where you are first greeted by this lovely oversflowing basket of Tiptree jams. Oh good lord, I was in heaven.Then you take your meal out to the orchard, literally, where you eat right in the middle of the trees, at little tables strewn throughout the area.
The tea servings were a bit small, but the scones were absolutely humongous, and the jam and lemonade were delicious as well.

After our tea, we walked back along the Cam and took in even more of the idyllic English setting on the way home.

1 comment:

  1. Positively "loverly"! Wish I could have joined you...it was relaxing just to imagine it (and my tummy feels full from that yummy scone). xoxo

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