I first thought it was a good lay out, an early split of queues, one to the left for sandwiches and cakes, one to the right for hot meals, until you realise that you/your party need both! Then it’s two queues. We arrived at about 11:45 on a sunny Sunday so we were expecting it to be busy, but it wasn’t too bad. Having ordered and paid we found a table without difficulty. The chairs were wicker with a cushion attached to the frame. Looked good but not too sure when there was any cleaning down the side of the cushions. Luckily there was only three of us so I could choose another chair, not sure there was sufficient space for both me and the food wreckage in the first chair. The hot drinks arrived first and on my first sip decided that it was ordinary tea not the Earl Grey I had ordered. I asked a waitress to check. She returned shorty with a fresh pot with a label hanging out saying Earl Gray, very re assuring. I was expecting a replacement cup and saucer, but only got a cup, so had to take the bits of sugar wrapper etc. off my other saucer to re-use it. Then we had the original cup of tea left sitting there all the time. The food, whilst reasonably priced, the meal cost us £24 for three, especially for a garden centre, was disappointing. My carvery bap was a large floppy bread cake with two small slices of beef in. The two paninis were very flat and tasteless. There was a high proportion of parents with young children, and an even higher proportion of parents who can’t be bothered to control children, so lots of screaming and activity.
What difference a smile would have made. There must have been 8 or 9 staff around, including those in the kitchen you can see and we didn’t see a smile form one of them. There was a feeling of doing a job/can’t be bothered by all the staff we saw or dealt with