• Greenhouse Café, Loch Leven’s Larder. Kinross.

    Greenhouse Café, Loch Leven’s Larder. Kinross.

    Whilst wafting along the A911 on a quiet Sunday I was delayed by a small queue of modern, sensible cars turning into Loch Leven’s Larder. My gallant charger and I followed into the packed free car park. We had stumbled across another one of those enormous, high-end farm shop emporiums beloved of active pensioners and…

  • Brera Caffé, Partick, Glasgow

    Brera Caffé, Partick, Glasgow

    Parking my trusted metallic steed Roccy in Partick was not easy in working hours, but you should stable yours in the metered bays on Peel Street and stroll back to Brera. 30 minutes on the ticket will suffice. Brera is a well-worn Scotch/Italian café. The subtly stylish matt grey exterior and big windows don’t boast…

  • 2 Children, Raeburn Place, Stockbridge, Edinburgh, Planet Earth

    2 Children, Raeburn Place, Stockbridge, Edinburgh, Planet Earth

    Stockbridge would normally be nightmare parking territory for the picky operator of an LWB van but I slid easily into a resident’s bay opposite 2 Children, one of the many, many upmarket-looking coffee outlets in the area and parked untouchably because it was Sunday. One hears a lot about the supposed superiority of certain areas…

  • Cadzow Bakehouse, Hamilton

    Cadzow Bakehouse, Hamilton

    13.23. I was desperate to get to Hamilton for 13.28. Not a sentence you often read nor the premise for a great action movie. But let me set the scene; 73mph on the M74. The PMiaV (our nameless protagonist; handsome, athletic, improbably full head of hair) must have coffee and a cinnamon bun. It’s Sunday,…

  • Billington’s of Lenzie

    Billington’s of Lenzie

    Naturally, I know some picky people. They decided to move from Hyndland to Lenzie; short commute, countryside, nice houses, the Academy… That’s quite picky. Hyndland is not exactly a slum. ‘Lenzie,’ snorted my friend Moira, dreadfully hungover on the sofa, ‘It’s just Cumbernauld.’ She waved a hand limply in a NE direction, indicating a large…

  • Tebay Services, M6, Cumbria.

    Tebay Services, M6, Cumbria.

    One of the many proclivities my auntie the gourmand, my uncle the retired vicar and my mother have in common, apart from their parents, love of odd dogs and a tendency to pedantry around the written word, is their deeply felt, somewhat illogical love of Tebay Services. They idolise Tebay. Both north and south-bound. Wonderful…

  • Wild Bean Café – Harthill, and everywhere

    Wild Bean Café – Harthill, and everywhere

    ‘I suppose,’ said Sancho, ‘You’re in some café, stuffing yourself…’ Au contraire. Not Proven. How on earth is she so prescient? I shouldn’t have taken this call. ‘…when you should be working.’ The horrid truth was I had stopped in a ‘café’ and I was ‘working’. Unfortunately, when we gentlefolk light hauliers are toiling away,…

  • Loch Fyne Oyster Bar Tree Shop Garden Centre café

    Loch Fyne Oyster Bar Tree Shop Garden Centre café

    It should be a truth universally acknowledged that one must avoid drinking coffee in a garden centre café. Hold on, I said that last week. But if a humble scribe must steal they should steal from the best and then get one’s karmic money’s worth by repeating it. Even into inanity. It also seems that…

  • The Oven at Overton Farm, Clyde Valley.

    The Oven at Overton Farm, Clyde Valley.

    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…

  • Tempura, Ayr.

    Tempura, Ayr.

    Is Fusion a good thing? Nuclear fusion, well it has its uses. We probably can’t do without it. Jazz Fusion, I’m not sure. I think we could do without it. I know Sancho could*. No music whatsoever from a genre beginning with the letter J is allowed on the van stereo when Sancho is driving,…