Afternoon tea is a charming way to spend quality time with a friend, with plenty of gaps for talking in-between bites of sandwiches and cakes. But like everything else prices have gone up.
You can expect to pay anything between £20 to £30 a head or even more if you add a glass of champagne. But a feast, accompanied by multiple cups of tea, doesn't have to cost the earth. At £10-a-head, the Boathouse Cafe's has to be one of -if not the most - affordable afternoon teas in Nottinghamshire. And the view's not bad either.
A photo on Facebook was enough to draw me to the riverside cafe at Beeston Marina, in the Rylands, a place more known for its bacon cobs than afternoon tea. A date was set - you have to give 48 hours notice, so don't expect to wander in off the towpath and start tucking in.
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It is obvious which table is ours as we walk into the popular cafe, since it was all set out, ready and waiting for us. Like the nuisance I am I ask if we could eat outside on the wooden picnic benches as it's so warm inside but the staff don't bat an eyelid and crack on with moving everything.
They insist we still have the pretty blue and white paper tablecloth as we move to a table near the waterside. We help to take everything out - and so does one of the other customers. A helpful little gesture, which doesn't go unnoticed and shows what kind of people frequent the cafe.
Despite the heat, it's a bit blowy so we pin down our paper plates and napkins so stop them flying away. A big platter with a foldaway net lid to protect the food is laden with sandwiches, crisps and salad on top of a frilly doily. Another is full of cakes - and when I say full, I mean really full - and strawberries.
As we pour tea into our china cups - not the usual cafe mugs - we agree it's our kind of teapot. Big - with enough for about three cups of tea each. A half-bottle of orange juice and a jug of water with orange slices mean we don't go thirsty.
Munching our way through neatly cut triangular sandwiches filled with ham, cheese, egg mayonnaise and prawns, we attract a lot of attention from passers-by and fellow customers. One of them comes over to us to have a closer look... I can sense her envy.
We polish off all the sandwiches, cheese and onion and plain crisps and the chopped up bits of iceberg lettuce, tomato and cucumber. Opening the lid of the second platter, we know for sure we are never going to get through all the cakes.
Some afternoon teas come with dainty sweet morsels, these are proper woman vs food eating challenge size cakes. With two of everything there's no arguing over who has what.
I opt for a plain scone with jam and cream - the smallest of the bunch. My friend gets stuck into one of the long doughnuts with jam and cream oozing out.
It's at this point, if I'd got a white flag I would be flying it, to surrender. There's no way we can polish off all the other cakes - call us lightweights but we are stuffed to the brim and can't risk going into a food coma as we need to drive home.
Cafe owner, Tony Gayle, an enthusiastic and chatty man, who runs the business with his partner Sandie Deacon, supplies us with containers to take away the remaining cream horns, vanilla slices, chocolate eclairs and ginger loaves He doesn't let us leave without showing us a photo of himself and Robbie Cumming, the star of BBC 4 series Canal Boat Diaries, on the wall and telling us what a sense of community there is at the Boathouse Cafe.
One touching feature is the memorial wall with wooden plaques dedicated to locals who have passed away. They include Bill Wheatley, the former chairman of Beeston Wildlife Group, and 13-year-old Owen Jenkins, who drowned whilst saving the lives of two girls who got into difficulty in Beeston Weir in 2017.
The Boathouse Cafe might not have the frippery and finesse of some afternoon teas but we left with our stomachs, and our hearts, full... and plenty more cakes for later.
