Warm up (Pretty Corner Cafe, Sheringham)

Pretty Corner Cafe,

Upper Sheringham,

Opening times April-Oct 10:30-17:00,

Closed Tuesdays outside of school holidays,

Recommended

After nearly a month without a normal cafe cycle ride I was finally able to get back to business today when Andrew (who is notoriously hard to please) announced his availability to be my cycling guest. We agreed to start from his house in Alysham so we could continue to fill in the obvious cafe gaps on the North Norfolk coast.

In case I hadn't mentioned it then tomorrow I am attempting to set a world record for a calorie neutral bike ride (see final count down). I thought I needed some extra media coverage so I decided to write to the Ken Bruce show on BBC radio 2 with the following.

"Hi Ken,

I see today the new Guinness book of so called world records is out. Well tomorrow I'm planning to set the world record for a calorie neutral cake and bike ride. Basically I need to go to as many cafes as possible on my bike and have a cake and hot drink at each. The only rule is you must burn off the calories from the last visit before you can go to the next. I plan to do 20. This will help prove to my disbelieving friends that cake and exercise are perfect bedfellows.

Well I wrote to the Guinness book of so called world records about my forth coming attempt and they washed their hands of me as they don't do gluttony records, which this clearly isn't. Well who needs them anyway as I'm quite capable of making my own world record certificate using my colouring set.

I have trained hard on the bicycling bit but really need an expert on eating to advise on the cake scoffing part, are you free to help with future training?

Thanks

The cake crusader"

After successfully sending it in I set off to drive up to Andrew's house. I put the car radio on and waited for Ken to read out my e-mail as it was clearly the best he would get today. Then, much to your surprise, after two records he announced that he had been contacted by the Cake Crusader (that would be me) and then read the whole thing.

Straight away my phone was red hot and by the time I arrived at Andrew's I found myself at the centre of a media storm having received both an e-mail and a tweet from people who had heard Ken's show. I therefore had to delay the start of our ride as I dealt with all the necessary social networking before we could set off to Pretty Corner cafe near Sheringham.

Outside entrance to Pretty corner cafe in upper Sheringham where Thursday is clearly bin day

If you call yourself pretty corner then you better make sure you are. Fortunately we were both impressed with the setting and lovely garden and felt the name was justified as we made our way down through the garden to the tea room area.

Pretty corner tea gardens leading to the cafe

Here we found a number of out door seating options dotted round the garden and on the terrace, plus a few tables inside. None of the inside tables were in use as it was a lovely hot day, which seemed to have attracted a lot of old ladies out for lunch.

It was waitress service so we were told to select a table, however I wanted to check out the cake selection first which we found in a big glass fridge. The fridge made it hard to select cake from without getting up close. Although it was a good number of cakes the lack of a proper display made it appear a less effective selection than it could have been although I still gave a fairly good effective cake selection mark.

Cakes in Fridge were not a great cake selection display

I selected data and apple slice plus a cheese scone (as part of my scone serving temperature research, sadly cold), Andrew had a cappuccino and cheese sandwich. I pointed out a cheese sandwich was not a cake but he explained that the fridge based cake display had made it too difficult from him to pick one. As a compromise he suggested he could try some of my scone and date and apple slice so that he could join in the reviewing. As they were both nice and large pieces I agreed although made it clear this would not be an acceptable precedent for future cafe cycle rides.

Cakes and drinks

My hot chocolate was an excellent thick one and very hot so scored highly. Andrew (who is notoriously hard to please) found his coffee too weak and milky so it didn't do so well.

The cheese scone was excellent, and got thumbs up from Andrew too. It would have been a contender for cheese scone of the year but as tasting will take place in December and Pretty corner cafe is shut then it can't qualify.

I reluctantly shared some of my date and apple slice with Andrew. I felt it was very good cake but Andrew gave it a low score. On further questioning he said it was because he doesn't actually like date and apple slice but if he did it was probably very nice, well he could have said that before taking some I thought. I therefore ignored his cake marking and decided never to share my cake with cycling guests in future.

Overall the Pretty Corner cafe had scored highly and was a very pleasant stop. I picked up a loyalty card, which requires a very reasonable 6 drinks for a free one, and have added it to my loyalty card picture library.

We set off on the return journey to Aylsham and I discussed my last minute preparation for tomorrow. Normally before an endurance event you would have a big pasta tea the previous night but as I need to fit in 20 slices of cake tomorrow I will be doing the opposite and just having cabbage soup.

Ratings for Pretty Corner cafe.

Hot Choc Quality	Guest Hot Drink Quality	Effective Cake Selection	Cake Quality	Ambiance and Atmosphere	Café Rating
8.0	5.0	7.50	7.75	8.00	7.25

Route

Click here to download 35 mile Alysham Sheringham loop gpx file for your gps