It should be a truth universally acknowledged that one must avoid drinking coffee in a garden centre café. Said establishments have a captive, pliant audience of pensioners with time on their hands, home improvement on their minds, triple-locked income in their digital pockets and simply no idea of what a single origin bean blend or cold-filter brew is. This combination of happy (unless they are forced into online banking or ordering using a Q code menu) undemanding folk tends not to lead to the high standards of brew sought out by the gentleman light haulier. Although usually the traybakes are satisfactory.
So what is the solution for a PMiaV travelling the A72 Lanark road along a sunny Clyde valley between appointments? In a few short miles this OAP honeytrap contains 3 garden centres, 2 garden building centres, a kitchen & bathroom centre and at least one antiques centre. Presumably I missed the tile & wet room centre, mobility centre, 24 hour vet centre, Honda Jazz dealership centre, caravan centre, cruiseliner centre, travel agent centre and crematorium. Most of the above seemed to contain their own café, but it should be a truth universally acknowledged….
Thus I was delighted to find The Oven at Overton Farm. Not a garden centre. The Oven is a farm shop. With a café. Which also seems to be an events and point-to-point centre. Farm shops have changed. They are no longer old milking sheds filled with pleasingly muddy veg and eggs with straw on them. They aren’t repurposed byers (except when they are, read next week’s review) but are now pseudo-rustic purpose-built agri-hangers of refined rural consumerism accessorised with llamas. Stuffed and real. Drive along the A66 from Penrith and feel the truth of my words. Free parking though and fine toilets abound.
The Oven is a pleasant, large, open room with tasteful A-frame beam supports. It was busy but not too noisy on a Monday lunchtime. Pensioners were jabbing warily at their tablets, parents wrangled toddlers and kind sons, daughters, grandsons and granddaughters were taking out parents and grandparents for lunch at precisely 13.00. Because that is lunchtime.
One is seated on arrival at a choice of many large tables with hard unforgiving chairs and can while away the time considering a mixed bag of farm and animal themed art hung about the walls. Some of this art is acceptable, other pieces are not that well executed to my picky eye. Rather like King Charles the First, I feel that if one is to carry out an execution, or be executed, it must be done well or not at all.
Then the problems, or rather my mild disappointment begins. The coffee, in a plain white cup and saucer, is average. The food is fairly priced and sized but not tasty. Everything is rather lacking in personality and one feels anonymous in the large room. The staff are effective but don’t seem to cherish me. Why on earth not? Perhaps they sense my distaste for all the horsey pictures. Could it just be that this sort of establishment is just not for my sort?
It does seem to be a numbers game in The Oven played with undemanding customers. They know that the punters will just keep coming, while they still can.
In summation, the garden centre/farm shop café problem can be illustrated by this observation: a cup of coffee in The Oven is made with one shot. I had to establish this and then order it doubled. In an artisan café this question, if one dares to ask it, is met with disbelief verging on affrontery by the tastefully pierced staff. There should be no single shots. It’s two to the head or nothing. It should be a truth universally acknowledged that…
I left the Oven and had a little nap in the van. All along this stretch of the Clyde Valley, in the garden centre car parks my fellow patrons napped with me. Waiting for teatime.
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