Mad. (51 Fifty One, Southwold)

51 | Fifty One

Southwold, Suffolk

Open Mon-Sat 8 - 5, Sun 8 - 4

Recommended

Yesterday I arranged for a cafe cycle ride with Big George, as it had been in our diaries for sometime. After some very recent calm weather I had checked the forecast and noted that strong winds from the south were foretasted for the day. I therefore came up with a cunning plan to cut out the majority of riding into the wind by catching the train to Lowestoft and going to Southwold from there before returning to Norwich with wind behind. 

Arriving at the bustling Lowestoft station ready for our ride.

One important thing to do when planning a ride is to make sure your cafe cycle stop comes at least halfway through and preferably nearer the end than the beginning of your route. This is to make sure you don't run out of steam towards the end of your trip. But today our planned stop would be less than a quarter of the way into the journey, rule book meet the waste paper bin. This, combined with doing the ride on Friday 13th, just showed how mad and crazy I can be but that's just my carefree unregulated approach to life. I was, however, slightly annoyed with Big George's faffing about at Lowestoft station causing us to set off 3 minutes behind schedule.

With the wind into our face for the first few miles down to Southwold it was certainly hard work and despite it not being a long way we were quiet puffed out when we arrived at 
51 Fifty One Southwold. 51 Fifty One Southwold cater for both those who like their cafe names to be numeric or alphanumeric. As a numbers man I felt at home as did Big George who is more fond of letters.

Outside 51 Fifty one.

There is no outside seating area available but inside is bright and light and with the friendly staff I awarded a good atmosphere and ambiance (AAA) score.

Inside 51 Fifty One is bright and light

After selecting our table I went to check out the cake selection which was fairly small and disappointingly had no cheese scones. 

Small but good looking cake selection

To make up for the lack of cheese scones I had a sausage roll to go with my chocolate Brownie. On the other hand Big George was very pleased with the lack of cheese scones as he is always tempted by them and it is not until he starts eating them he remembers he doesn't really like cheese scones. Fortunately he was free of this problem for today and was much happier having a sausage roll and some Apricot and Almond cake (gluten free).  

Drinks, cakes and sausage rolls

My Hot chocolate and Big George's cappuccino were both nice if not exceptional and I awarded appropriate drinks ratings. However we both though our cakes were excellent. Despite the lack of gluten Big George raved about his Apricot and Almond cake and insisted I put it down as a contender for this years Cake Crusader cake of the year 2015. Which I did.

Although not cake and therefore not part of my cafe rating system, the sausage rolls were very good indeed and Big George kept going on about how nice his sausage roll was all the way home (which I assumed wasn't an innuendo).

Overall it was certainly worth the trip down to 51 Fifty One and I recommend a visit if you are out that way.

Today was also the start of a new cafe project. I have noted the modern trend of naming cafes after their street number. As a lover of all things numerical, plus my need for putting things in order, I have decided to try and visit 100 cafes named 1 - 100 and then re order them into best to worst. As well as 51 my collection already contains 7 (see close to home) so only 98 cafes to go on this particular mission (suggestions welcomed).

We now had a long ride back to Norwich albeit with the wind behind but unfortunately my carefree craziness proved costly as Big George bonked (cycle speak for ran out of steam) with a few miles to go and we had to crawl along for the last few miles. Time to retrieve the rule book from the bin I'm afraid.

Scores for 51 Fifty one

Hot Choc Quality	Guest Hot Drink Quality	Effective Cake Selection	Cake Quality	Ambiance and Atmosphere	Café Rating
6.5	6.5	5.5	8.5	7.5	6.90

Route

Click here to download 50 mile Lowestoft Norwich via Southwold GPX file to your GPS