Peacocks Tea Room, Ely, Cambridgeshire

Peacocks Tearoom, Ely, Cambridgeshire is very much your old fashioned type - and proudly so. The decor is slightly chintzy but sweet and welcoming, giving just the right air of civilised repose! As you can see from the picture above, there is an outside seating area and this is just by the river so you can spend the afternoon watching the boats drift through and people feeding the ducks if you so wish. It has also won awards for its teas from the Tea Guild so it HAD to be on our list.

It was a glorious, but slightly humid day and so we sat inside for our visit on account of the nice breeze from the fan. 

The menu at Peacocks is full of delights and of the savoury kind too so it's not all about the cakes. But for us, it was! We ordered the 'Pink Perfection' for two which included smoked salmon finger sandwiches, a glass each of pink bubbly and was followed by 2 scones with clotted cream and jam. This option usually comes with rose tea to complete the pink theme but we opted for the unadventurous breakfast tea. 

On ordering, we were given a choice of jams (we went for raspberry and strawberry) but I was very disappointed to find that plain scones were not available. I'm not averse to fruit scones to be honest but another of my cream tea companions would have been horrified by this! (And possibly left hungry too.) The other options were cheese scones and, if you want to really push the boat out, chocolate scones but we (keeping up our theme of being on the safe side) stuck with fruit.

I must say, the sandwiches and bubbly were delightful and really hit the spot. BUT, this is a cream teas review blog, so onto the sweet stuff. I found the scones very slightly dry, review 'L' did not, but they were certainly good, home-made and not overly crumbly. The tea was tasty but difficult to get it to the right colour. That said, it was massive pot and you could spend all afternoon chatting and slurping tea if you wanted, they don't skimp. 

As far as the service was concerned, they were all really friendly and happy to offer alternatives to the set menus. There was usually someone around to ask for anything you need; never did you feel they were intrusive or rushing you. 

All in all, I would recommend Peacocks, for cream teas or (from what I saw) a relaxing lunch or even a slice of cake. It was bright, comfy, traditional but not stuffy. And there is ample opportunity to walk it all off after with after a stroll along the river or an uphill walk up to the glorious Ely Cathedral.