The Great Cream Tea Tour of Devon - #1
Hello lovely people!So my fabby friend Tom (you'll know him from the Road Trip Vlog) and I have come up with a snazzy little blog feature for these here summer months (the week of sunshine didn't count guys, it'll be back!). It has long been said that young Thomas and myself are like an old married couple, we have never denied this and this summer we have decided to embrace our inner OAP's and indulge in one of our favourite past times for your entertainment... Devonshire cream tea!
Anyone who has been to the South West will know that cream tea is an absolute institution. There is nothing we won't do for a good scone, homemade jam, good quality clotted cream and a teapot full of the brown stuff and because of this it's often the first port of call for tourists of all nationalities when they arrive in the county. But what makes a good one, where is best to go and where is worth giving a wide berth I hear you ask? Thats precisely what we're here to tell you my friends. Basically, as Devon is a bit of a hollybobs type destination for us Brits we figured that quite a few of you lovelies would be passing through at some point in your lovely lives, everyone loves a cheeky bit of Devon after all, and we thought it would awfully helpful of us to do all the leg work for you and point you all in the right scone based direction so that you get the true Devon experience without having to traipse tearooms across the county...we'll do that for you... no really. It's fine by us.
Anywho, we've already done quite a bit of legsaving research (purely research of course...) as anyone who follows my Instagram will have seen! But being the silly people we are and because we hadn't cemented our scoring system and remembered to take actual photos we thought we'd let this one (probably our fourth now?) be our first cream tea destination on this little tour!
On Wednesday, which despite questionable weather forecasts turned out to be gloriously sunny and pretty darn toasty, we decided to pop in the car and drive up onto Dartmoor in search of one of my all time favourite cream tea destinations, The Two Bridges Hotel in Princetown. It's a gorgeous country hotel surrounded by stunning moorland and filled with the kind of countryside charm that only the British can truly acheive. Anywho, I digress. It's a place i've been to a few times with the famalam and in my humble opinion the cream tea is always amaaazing. As it was particularly warm we ordered and wandered back outside to soak up the rays, responsibly of course, with my favourite ginger fellow in tow we're always wise to slather on the SPF... after all as he so nicely puts it 'Gingers don't tan they fry'- scones AND suncare advice, you lucky people! The cream tea for one consists of two homemade scones, homemade jam, local clotted cream and a pot of tea, in this particular establishment it costs £7.95, quite pricey as far as cream teas go but it's worth it... oh is it worth it!
The tea came out on a big slate which we both thought was quite snazzy although I will always be an advocate of a cake stand but thats just me and my love for cake stands! We both commented on how much cream and jam there was as we've found this to be the make or break factor, too little and you're left with a slightly sad, slightly dry scone, but we almost had too much in this case. When it was brought out I actually thought it was ice cream as there was so much, but anywho. I'd also like to point out at this point that the eternal question of cream first or jam is an important one and i'm pretty sure that where Devon cream tea is concerned, i've been doing it the jam first, then cream (Cornish) way for years. For that you can blame my Cornish grandmother... but really, it doesn't matter as it's tasty either way! The scones were the type that my nan would be proud of (she taught me everything I know in the scone world...), slightly crispy on the outside and full of cakey loveliness inside. They were pretty hefty in size as well so if theres two of you it might be wise to just get the one cream tea and perhaps just order one more scone...I always find that the last half of the second scone to be quite the mission! We both went silent which is always a good sign and all I could muster was 'It's sooo good!' and thats about as good a review as you can get i'd say. Really good jam (theres a lot that can be said about good jam!) and good tea which is often the forgotten factor, but is equally as important. We both like a loose tea leaf so we were slightly disappointed to spy a teabag in the pot but if good quality, which it was, this shouldn't really matter! In the lovely surroundings, with a gaggle of geese wandering about (terrorising some baffled looking tourists) and friendly staff, i'd say this is a real gem tucked up on the moors and definitely worth a visit so we would give it a 4 out of 5 scone rating (get it?! took us ages that did!)
Any recommendations are very much welcome!
P.S...
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