Management speak. (Courtyard cafe, Fakenham)

The Courtyard Cafe,

Fakenham,

Opening times Every day 9:00-17:00 

The weather has been so inconsistent recently that I have had several planned cafe cycle rides called off by my cycling guests. However there was no danger of this happening yesterday as it was a clear blue sky that greeted us for the ride. I also had two cycling guests booked in from the previously cancelled efforts. One was Cake Crusader veteran Andrew (who is Notoriously hard to place) and the other was Matt, an old work colleague of ours who was new to cycling and currently between roles in the world of big business.

As we left Hard to Please House (HTPH) on our trip to Fakenham it was difficult to understand much of what Matt was saying as he spoke in Management speak, a language I had become rusty in. The only thing I understood was about blue sky thinking and agreed with Matt that I thought today's sky was blue.

Moving forward we successfully overcame all the opportunities that challenged us on our journey and hit the key objective of getting to the courtyard cafe at Pensthorpe nature park with an excellent performance rating, apparently.

Outside the Courtyard cafe at Pensthorpe 

The Courtyard cafe is indeed courtyard based and sitting there on such a lovely day it not surprisingly attracted a high AAA mark.

The courtyard the cafe was named after

The cake selection was prettying good too and between us we covered the coffee, victoria and muffin cake bases. 

Lots of cake options

When our food and drinks arrived the hot chocolate and cakes performed well but the coffee had some developmental opportunities. 

Cakes and drinks about to undertake their performance review

The courtyard cafe was a nice stop and of similar standard to a number of attraction based establishments I have been too. Whilst there I also checked out their sausage roll for sausage roll of the year #SROTY. It was pretty good but the standard of my current finalists is so high it didn't make the cut.

Penthorpe courtyard cafe sausage roll offering

Our next objective was to take Matt to a top ten rated cafe as he wanted to see what world class looked like. We had chosen Heydon Tearoom as it was on route back to HTPH and would give me the opportunity to check out their sausage roll as well.

Preparing to go across the tea room in Heydon

As we sat outside on a warm Autumn day and enjoyed some of Norfolks best cakes Matt could see the attraction of a more chilled life outside the hectic world of big business of which he likes to operate in. We then spent a few minutes updating the ratings for Heydon Cafe and Shop before completing our trip. 

Self proclaimed star cakes at Heydon Tea room

Back at HTPH Matt told us how much he had enjoyed the ride although he insisted on a post ride feedback and review session so we could agree what went well, what went badly and how to improve for next time. 

Scores

Hot Choc Quality	Guest Hot Drink Quality	Effective Cake Selection	Cake Quality	Ambiance and Atmosphere	Café Rating
6.9	5	7.1	7.2	7.4	6.72

Route

Click here to downlaod 44 mile Alysham Fakenham loop GPX file to your gps