Cream tea in Chaddesley Corbett

While we were on vacation in the UK, R*'s mum made sure stopped for cream tea at the Chaddesley Corbett Post Office.

R* and his mum ordered hot chocolate and a scone. I was indecisive about the menu. I wanted to order the full cream tea, but didn't want to seems like too much of a pig. I already had a pasty while souvenir shopping in Kidderminster a few hours earlier.

Since I never had a real English cream tea, R* and his mum encouraged me to order one, so I went for it.

After a few minutes spent gazing out the tea room's beautiful picture window (you can see the big window in the far right of the picture below), the waitress came back to say that they were almost out of plain scones. She explained that the scones were homemade every day by a local woman. The order for the new day hadn't yet arrived.


She offered cheese scones as an alternative. Those also sounded good to me, but R* and his mum said that they would rather share the one order of plain scones.

We waited a few more minutes. There were some souvenir note cards with watercolor paintings of the black and white cottages of Chaddesley Corbett and some Chaddesley Corbett tea towels. R*'s mum explained that it's a tradition for some people to give tea towels from the villages they visit.

Then a man with two over-stuffed plastic shopping bags came into the room. He told us he had the new scones and asked if we wanted to go back to our original order of scones for three. Yes, we quickly said.

After a few more minutes, our food came out. The hot chocolates came first, in tall china mugs. Then my tea pot and the scones, served with clotted cream and raspberry jam. They came in a crescent-shaped dish, to hug my saucer.

I dug right in. I was trying to be tea room proper, but I couldn't help myself. I broke open my first scone and it was still warm in the middle. I started smoothing the rich clotted cream on to the scone and then the raspberry jam.

Then my British hosts politely stopped me . . . know why?