Mileage target. (Shambles Cafe Bar, North Walsham)

Shambles Café Bar,

North Walsham,

Open Tue-Sat 09:00-21:00, Sun 12-4.

Recommended

It was a day of high risk in the world of cycle cafe riding today. Andrew (who is notoriously hard to please) had been told about a good cafe in North Walsham and as a well trained cycling guest thought we should check it out. On reviewing my recently updated Cake Crusader cafe location map (which now has 238 visited cafes on it) there was an obvious gap in the North Walsham area, so I agreed to the trip.

To add to the risk Andrew also said he would take charge of the route. I checked my "optimum ride length" table which showed that an Autumn ride should be between 30 and 40 miles so I requested the route to be in that range.

As soon as we left Hard to Please House in Aylsham it was clear that Andrew had not planned the route properly. He was allowing it to evolve dynamically as he didn't decide which way to go until we arrived at each junction. Clearly I did not approve of such a casual approach so to help him calibrate the ride distance I took to reporting into him on the completion of every 5 mile section.

As it was a lovely crisp Autumn day I didn't actually mind the prospect of additional miles if Andrew got a bit too gung ho with the route but obviously kept this to myself so as not to encourage him.

Lovely Autumn scene with a tractor and everything

Surprisingly as I announced the completion of our 20th mile we rolled into North Walsham where we found the Shambles Cafe Bar near a big church.

Standing in the outdoor continental style outdoor seating area outside the cafe

There was plenty of seating options including a continental style outdoor seating area, an outdoor courtyard area plus indoor seating which we opted for.

The virtual cake selection on the menu board was larger than the real thing but both the carrot cake and lemon drizzle looked excellent so we went for them to accompany my hot chocolate and Andrews Capuchino.

The actual cake selection available

Both our drinks were fairly standard examples and attracted fairly standard drink quality ratings. The cakes however were excellent and Andrew felt some of the finest he had had this year. 

Todays refreshments

My only concern was with the size of the cake fork as they had clearly been obtained for much bigger people or much bigger cake. As a clever way round this then Shambles had served the cake on saucers to make it look bigger although it wasn't fooling me.

Interesting plate and fork sizing approach in operation

Despite the mismatched sizing approach in operation it was a very pleasant stop and I would recommend a visit if you are in the area.

When it was time to head back I was looking forward to seeing where Andrew's route would end up in the agreed 30-40 mile criteria. It soon became clear that Andrew had bottled it and was taking a fairly direct route back to Aylsham. When it was apparent that we were going to undershoot the mileage requirement Andrew had to introduce a pointless loop and we just scraped in on 30.5 miles.

Although I admired Andrews free flowing routing approach the stress of not knowing if we be doing the right number of miles was too much and I required an extra long afternoon kip. I will be going back to pre planning all routes in future

Scores

Hot Choc Quality	Guest Hot Drink Quality	Effective Cake Selection	Cake Quality	Ambiance and Atmosphere	Café Rating
6	6	6.2	8.4	7.0	6.72

Route

Click here to download 30 mile Aylsham North Walsham loop gpx file for your gps