Text by Bruce Richardson
Taking Tea in the Land of Peter Rabbit
Images of England’s Lake District have filled our heads ever since our parents lulled us to sleep with the wondrous Tales of Peter Rabbit and Benjamin Bunny. This UNESCO World Heritage Site, located in the northwest corner of Great Britain, is a picture-perfect landscape of stone houses, colorful gardens, magical waterfalls, and lakeside villages conveniently dotted with the occasional tearoom. A favorite oasis for tea lovers sits in the center of the Edwardian seaside resort town of Grange-over-Sands, where visitors flock to one of England’s most lauded tearooms, The Hazelmere.
Built in 1897 as a café and refreshment room that featured local fare, the historic Hazelmere Café building is fronted by a glass canopy and overlooks the town’s ornamental gardens and mile-long promenade along the sand flats of Morecambe Bay. Wealthy industrialists from Lancashire and Yorkshire traveled here via the Furness Railway a century ago. Tourists from around the world mingle with the devoted local clientele today. Passersby are lured in by the extravagant display of freshly baked breads, rolls, and pies that fill the bakery window next door.
Dorothy Stubley and her late husband, Ian, bought the café in 1984 and expanded the business to include a bakery and tea shop. A devoted student of tea, Dorothy sources, packages, and serves more than 100 exceptional teas from around the world. Her unique combination of tea and culinary skills brought her to the attention of the British Guild of Tea Shops, which presented her with the coveted Top Afternoon Tea Award in 2006. And in 2015, Cumbria Life crowned The Hazelmere the Café of the Year in its annual Food & Drink Awards.
The menu here is a tour de force of British cuisine, emphasizing local ingredients sourced from neighboring family farms and producers. Guests can choose from traditional savories such as sausage rolls, Cornish pasties, Morecambe Bay potted shrimps, or steak and kidney pies. The listing of sweets includes such temptations as Eccles cakes, Cumberland Rum Nicky, Bakewell tarts, or sticky toffee pudding with Jersey double cream. You will be sure to find your favorite teatime delicacy here.
The afternoon-tea food is so delicious that you might be tempted to return for dinner, breakfast, and a basketful of take-aways for a memorable afternoon lakeside picnic.
Grange-over-Sands is the kind of village in which you want to hide away for a weekend, but there is so much more to see just up the road—or lake. Visitors should expect to stay at least three days to absorb all the local flavors. An hour north of Grange-over-Sands is the lakeside town of Bowness-on-Windermere, a convenient base for many first-time visitors. This Victorian village is located midway along Lake Windermere, England’s largest natural lake. From this unspoiled town, tourists travel by car or lake steamer to the north lake villages of Ambleside and Keswick or further north to Lake Ullswater or Hadrian’s Wall’s Roman ruins.
The Hazelmere is located at 1 Yewbarrow Terrace in Grange-over-Sands, Cumbria. For more information, go to thehazelmere.co.uk or ring +44 15395 32972.
