Reckless. (Tickety Boo Garden cafe, Thurston)

Tickety Boo Garden Cafe,

Thurston,

Tue-Fri 9:30-4:00, Sat 10:00-4:00

Highly Recommended

Despite it being a mild winter it has been a bad one in the world of cafe cycle riding. I have had a number of rides postponed this year as rain, wind, ice and snow have corresponded with my plans. It has meant that I have only managed to visit two new cafes in the first 6 weeks of the year. So when I woke up this morning to the sound of howling winds I thought that another trip had bitten the dust.

However today's cycling guest, Big George, was also frustrated by the lack of recent pedalling action so despite a forecast promising 50 mph gusting winds we decided to be reckless and go on our ride.

With well over 250 cafes and tearooms visited in the region I had pretty much run out of new venues to visit that could be cycled to from home. This has meant now driving away from Norwich to start my rides. Today we drove to Knettishall country park car park to cycle in the Breckland area.

On arrival I realised that this was an opportunity for a new feature (and spreadsheet) as I would start my search for the top ten free car parks to cycle from. Knettishall country park car park scored 7.3 and goes straight to number one.

Knettishall Country park car park.
My current number 1 rated free car park to start a cycle ride from

The first few miles were with the wind so we flew along but then we turned south and were hit by strong cross winds. The real danger came whenever there was a gap in the hedge as the wind would try and lift you off the road and pop you into the nearest hedge. We both rode at a 45 degree angle as we battle this section and safely made it to the next wind based challenge.

When we turned West we were now straight into the wind and progress almost ground to a halt. You know you are in trouble when you are pedalling really hard in your easiest gear when going down hill.

We had only done 18 miles but were completely shattered when we reached today's venue , Tickety Boo Garden Cafe in the village of Thurston.

Outside Tickety Boo's trying to stay upright in the wind

Much to our surprise we were not the only cyclists stupid enough to go riding today as we had been beaten there by a group of riders from Diss CC.

Big George had not been happy when I had told him the name of today's cafe as he felt it would be far too twee for his hard man Scottish image. However he was quite impressed with the venue as there were fried things on the menu and sausage rolls on the counter. For me they had an excellent cake selection plus fruit scones which I immediately entered into my fruit scone of the year competition #FSOTY.

A very fine effective cake selection

I went for ginger cake and dark hot chocolate (always good sign when you are given a choice between milk and dark) and Big George an americano and sausage roll (which is still not cake).

Today's drinks and cakes

Our drinks were both excellent and scored highly although Big George would have liked his coffee a bit hotter. My cake was very nice although I could have taken a bit more ginger. Although not part of my rating system Big George said it was the best sausage roll he had had since we had made rare breed pigs even rarer with our rare pig sausage rolls at Itteringham post office several years ago (see Black Friday).

We both thought Tickety Boo was an excellent, and cycle friendly, stop and I would highly recommend a visit.

It was still windy on the way back but at least we had it behind for the last few miles (just after I had been blown into a ditch, which was nice).

Just before we got back to the car park I saw a sign saying we were leaving the Brecks, I thought a catchy name for this would be a Brexit but I had a feeling I had heard that term somewhere before although I couldn't remember when.

Scores

Hot Choc Quality	Guest Hot Drink Quality	Effective Cake Selection	Cake Quality	Ambiance and Atmosphere	Café Rating
7.8	7	8.65	7.5	7.8	7.75

Route

Click here to download 37.5 mile Thetford Bury St Edmunds loop gpx file on your gps