Sportive 7,
Every days a Picnic,
Hedenham,
Opening times Mon-Sat 09:00-17:00, Sun 10:00-16:00
Highly Recommended
Yesterday saw Cake Crusader Sportive number 7 take place. It was a 31 mile ride south from Norwich towards Bungay with a stop at top rated cafe; Every Days a Picnic (see Celebrity ride). The sportive had attract a large entrance of 5 (including two sportive débutantes) and started, as always, with 15 minutes of faffing about at race HQ. Water bottle filling, tyre pumping and GPS setting occupying the faffing slot.
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| Sportive competitors showing good pre ride faffing about skills |
The ride out was into the wind with the peleton being split up due to the large amount of chatting and lack of pedalling. New boy Dom was showing a worrying care free attitude. First I had to pull him up on his comment that 'the rain had stayed off so far'. This is always seen as a cycling faux pas as such remarks are sure to mean that it will soon start raining. However Dom wrongly believed that he was now of the age when he could throw caution to the wind and just come out and say these type things. I'm not sure I liked this gung-ho approach as it was risking a sportive soaking. I also noted he didn't have any form of cycle computer on his bike. So no way to know distance covered, average speed etc. I was therefore unclear on how he was going to fill in his cycling stats spreadsheet and produce his monthly cycling summary report (like I do).
Despite this laissez faire attitude we successful made it to the Every Days a Picnic Cafe at Hedenham.
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| Outside back entrance of Every days a picnic |
After locking the bikes, using a number of different security measures (including Alarmio), we selected our cakes from the cake menu mini blackboard. Barry ordered a sausage sandwich and as a sausage sandwich is clearly not a cake (or listed on the cake menu mini blackboard) he would take no further part in any cake related rating today.
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| Cake menu mini blackboard |
When the cakes and drinks arrived I tried to facilitate the group in the critical activity of cafe cycle rating. It quickly became apparent that not everyone was fully engaged. Barry won't rate his coffee as it was too hot, (by the time it was at a temperature he was happy with we had moved on and I discounted his drinks comments). Ali, as he does at every cafe, complained his latte was in a vase rather than a cup and wanted to deduct a point from his guest drink quality score (this is against cafe rating rules so I ignored him) and Dom said 'well it's cake isn't it' once again demonstrating a far from acceptable cafe cycle rating attitude.
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| Cakes and drinks which all looked very good |
I threatened to get out my whiteboard app to restore control and this brought the group to order. It soon became apparent that everyone thought the cakes and drinks were excellent and once I had sifted through all the feedback there was full agreement that Every Day's a Picnic Cafe was an excellent stop. In fact the sportive group had come up with the same overall cafe score as I did with Big George on my last visit thus keeping it's place in high up in my cafe or tea room league table.
The ride back had wind behind with some sportive competitors getting very excited about having to cross three fords (without any one falling off). I have since checked my ride data to discover that five fords is the current single route record. Fortunately the rain stayed away but if it hadn't we all know whose fault it would have been.
Ratings for Every days a picnic based on three visits
Hot
Choc Quality
|
Guest
Hot Drink Quality
|
Effective
Cake Selection
|
Cake
Quality
|
Ambiance
and Atmosphere
|
Café
Rating
|
6.33
|
7.83
|
7.5
|
8.5
|
7.42
|
7.52
|
Todays route
Click on link to download
31 mile Norwich Hedenham loop GPX file for your GPS
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