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Bettys is brilliant. To me it epitomises the quintessential British tea room. On my recent visit to York a trip to Bettys for afternoon tea was on top of my must do list alongside seeing the York Minster.
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Café Liberty
This month’s scone blog features a couple of fabulous cafes in London as well as a day trip to York, where I managed to fit in two scone tastings including a visit to the legendary Betty’s. I’ll start with my visit to Liberty, one of London’s top department stores, with it’s beautiful Tudor-revival architecture.
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One of the pleasures of writing this blog, apart from eating the scones of course, is discovering new, quirky places, so Yannick and I decided to visit Ham Yard Hotel in Soho, which only opened a couple of months ago. Despite being a Westminster Guide, I have to say to my shame, even I had a bit of difficulty finding it as it's tucked away behind Piccadilly Circus but for me that just added to it's charm. 
I ordered the scones which arrived warm and beautifully presented wrapped in a napkin in a wire basket. They were accompanied with a generous portion of clotted cream and two bowls of jam, one strawberry and the other cherry.
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Agatha Christie Mile Plaque - Torquay
Crime and Cream Teas Part II features more about my recent trip to the Agatha Christie Festival in her home town of Torquay. In Part I I wrote about my visit to Greenway, Agatha's holiday home but in this blog I am focusing on some of the other things I did.
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This weekend Archibald Leach aka Cary Grant Comes Home to his home town of Bristol (11 – 12 October 2014) where there lots of fab and fun events taking place. Yesterday I enjoyed afternoon tea at Avon Gorge Hotel and attended fascinating talks at the Watershed which gave great insight into his personal life and acting career.
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Barnaby
Greenway was Agatha Christie's beloved holiday home in Devon and seems a good place to start the first installment of my blog about the recent Agatha Christie Festival. This annual crime writing festival takes place in and around Torquay, Agatha's birthplace, each September to coincide with her birthday. Since my last visit in 2011 the festival has certainly grown both in the numbers of visitors and organised events.
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Foxcroft and Ginger
This month's scone blog is a bumper edition with six reviews and breaking with tradition it's including some of the places I visited while holidaying in Torquay. However before we do a Devon detour we start with Foxcroft and Ginger in London’s Soho.
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The Great Hall
We enjoyed a visit to The Making of Harry Potter at the Warner Bros Studios, the week before the royal visit on Friday 26th April by the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, Prince Harry and J.R. Rowling, and here's a blog with just a few photos from our trip. The studios were acquired by Warner Bros. in 2000 and is where all eight Harry Potter films, based on the books by J. K. Rowling,were made. The studios are built on the site of a former aircraft factory.
The tour starts with a film show before the doors open and lead you into the Great Hall. This is just as magnificant as you would expect it to be both in sheer scale and decoration.
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Agatha Christie Memorial - London
The London memorial to Agatha Christie by Ben Twiston-Davies is cleverly designed in the shape of a book reflecting her status as one of the world’s best selling authors.
The bronze memorial was unveiled on 18th November 2012 to coincided with The Mousetrap's 60th anniversary celebrations.
It is located close to Leicester Square Tube Station at the junction of Cranbourn Street and Great Newport Street, in the heart of London’s theatreland.
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St Albans is best known for its magnificent cathedral but if you’ve travelled there by train you might have noticed the historic St Albans Signal Box adjacent to the station. This cheerful yellow and maroon painted building always puts a smile on my face as I travel past it so I was delighted to find out that there are regular free open days throughout the year.
The Signal Box is Grade II listed and dates back to 1892, replacing an earlier one on the site. It is a prefabricated wooden building, meaning that it was built off site, and at a later time the building was extended with the idea to house more levers but they were never installed. It closed in 1979 and has since been restored and opened to the public thanks to the volunteers from the St Albans Signal Box Preservation Trust.