Today I celebrate 3 weeks since I
was struck down and ended up with my unexpected emergency stomach op and visit to
intensive care. As I'm starting to get my strength back I feel it is time to see how close I am to a potential bus based cafe review.
There are
a number of steps I need to be able to complete to do a bus based café review.
1.
Get to bus stop
2.
Ride on bumpy bus without splitting in two
3.
Get from bus stop to café or tearoom without falling over
4.
Sit in café or tearoom long enough to review it without needing a
kip
5.
Repeat steps 3-1.
I can comfortably achieve step 1
so I thought I would first have a crack at steps 3 and 4.
We live
fairly near to Waitrose and as a proud owner of a MyWaitrose card I believed I was
entitled to a free hot drink at their café. So on Wednesday I set off on the mammoth
10 minute walk, supported by Chris (wife), to Waitrose café.
Although I don't review cafe
chains if I had been doing Waitrose cafe it would be at
the bottom of my ratings. The hot chocolate, guest drink, cakes etc were all low
quality and the cafe was very busy, packed with people after their free drink. A
little hypercritical, you may say, as it was the free drink that had partly
attracted me to the Waitrose café in the first place. But no! To make matters
worse you can have a free coffee or free tea but not a free hot chocolate so I
even had to pay for this unpleasant experience. I have
therefore decided to continue to boycott Waitrose cafe and will
be writing to the chief executive (a Mr J Lewis) to tell him to sort out his free hot drink offering. I suggest you all use Stephanie's coffee house in Eaton instead.
I
just about passed the trial run of points 3 and 4 (getting there and back and
staying awake long enough to have a drink) but unfortunately the exertion of
the trip and anger at being charged for my free hot drink meant I needed a
couple of hours lie down afterwards. I was worried that I still wasn't ready
for a full bus based cafe review trip.
Therefore
on Friday I decided to do a another trial run to Notcutts cafe. This time, to
better replicate a bus based trip, Chris (wife) would play the part of bus
driver and drive me there in our bus simulator. To add further to the
realism I waited by the bus simulator for a few minutes before getting on
board, it is a single decker bus simulator so I had to sit downstairs.
 |
| The bus simulator used for practice trip to Notcutts which I photographed while waiting for the bus simulator driver |
Once I
had alighted the bus simulator in Notcutts car park we made our way to the cafe. The
Notcutts loyalty card includes hot chocolate as a hot free beverage option but you can only
have two free drinks per month. This is still infinitely better than the no free hot
chocolate available on every visit to the Waitrose cafe.
Through habit I also ordered a Notcutts cheese scone which I regretted as it was very
average. If I was reviewing Notcutts cafe it would be bottom Quartile but far
better than the Waitrose offering.
The
return bus simulator ride home was very smooth probably as the bus simulator driver had purchased a number of house plants and pots and therefore was driving very
carefully.
At the
end of this trip I still needed a short lie down but this time quickly recovered. I had enough energy to spend another action packed afternoon sitting in my chair in the garden pointing at
weeds that the 'gardener' (who looked very like the bus simulator driver) needed to pull
up.
With my trial run check list complete then next week I should be ready for a real bus based cafe review. I will be getting out the bus timetables to start planning the trip over the weekend.
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