New Roads please. (Kings Cafe, Shipdham)

Kings Cafe,

Shipdham,

Opening times Tue-Sun 9:00-16:00

It had been a week since the end of my London to Paris cycle cafe ride and my derrière had just about recovered. Therefore it was time I got back on my continued mission to cycle to and review all the cafes I can find in the Norfolk, North Suffolk and Cambridgeshire area. Today, with guests Chris (wife) and Andrew (who is notoriously hard to please), I had chosen a 41 mile round trip to the Kings Cafe in Shipdham.

On an increasingly cloudy morning we headed west at a nice fast pace enjoying the quite Norfolk country lanes. After a while we came to a long stretch of newly 'repaired' road. These days repairing the road seems to consist of tipping as much gravel as you can find in a load of uneven piles and waiting for the passing traffic to drive over the road in order to flatten the gravel out a bit. The amount of road 'repaired' depends on how much gravel you managed to find before you ran out. On this occasion a lot of gravel had been found and not much passing traffic had been by as we skidded and bumped our way through the piles of pebbles at a snail pace for sometime. Fortunately and despite a few near misses, none of us fell off but we were all a bit shaken by the experience. I have therefore crossed this road of my routes list for the next few months.

After this stretch the rest of the ride to the Kings Cafe in Shipdham was a breeze.

The Kings cafe is right at the end of the village in what looks like a converted pub. Inside has a nice bright feel and out the back there is a good looking patio outdoor seating area. As myself and Andrew had mistakenly chosen to wear only short sleeve cycle tops, and it was colder than it looked, we opted to stay inside.

Outside Kings Cafe in Shipdham

I checked out the cake selection in the glass cake display tower. There had obviously been a run on carrot cake as there was only one bit left. Although there were not that many cakes to choose from they were all ones I liked so I awarded a medium effective cake selection (ECS) rating.

Cakes on display in glass cake display tower.
There was also a lemon cake I seemed to have cropped from the photo and scones on the counter

I went for the last piece of carrot cake with my hot chocolate and Chris went for chocolate fudge cake with her Mocha. Andrew (who I'm starting to suspect isn't taking cycle cafe reviewing seriously) went for a pot of tea with egg and chips. Egg and chips is clearly not cake so he played no further part in cake reviewing and frankly I now wasn't that interested in his view on the tea.

Drinks and cakes ready for reviewing whilst Andrew eats his egg and chips

There was certainly no complaints about the size of the drinks however due to the large volume they were both very weak. Chris decided to ask if they could beef her Mocha up strength wise and the extremely nice waitress was very happy to do so. The new improved Mocha was excellent and doubled the mark Chris had originally given it. I only wished I had done the same with my hot chocolate. I now had a rating dilemma as to how to score the Mocha. I referred to the cycle cafe rating handbook which had a section covering such an occurrence stating that the average of the before and after drink rating should be used. So I did that.

The cake was good if not exceptional but we all agreed that, as long as the drinks were strong enough, the Kings Cafe was an excellent cycle cafe stop with a very friendly atmosphere.

On the journey home my thoughts turned to my next planned ride where I plan to break the world record for the most cafes visited on a calorie neutral bicycle ride (see going alone). I just hope there have been no more road improvements on my planned route to slow me down.

Ratings for Kings Cafe

Hot Choc Quality	Guest Hot Drink Quality	Effective Cake Selection	Cake Quality	Ambiance and Atmosphere	Café Rating
4.0	6.0	6.0	6.0	7.5	5.90

Route

Click link to download 41 mile Norwich to Shipdham Loop GPX file for your GPS