Bradford on Avon is a small town, hilly and quaint, and it wasn’t until our last morning there that we actually found time to explore it as we had been so busy going elsewhere. It’s a good base for touring the area.

While I was doing a bit of research into the place I discovered that The Bridge Tea Rooms have won a ‘best tea room’ competition this year – and not for the first time, obviously we had to check it out. As you can see it’s housed in a medieaval building, you have to stoop to get through the door, even if you are small. It’s steeped in mock Victoriana kitsch, which might be what had attracted the competition judges, but it didn’t come up to the standards of any of the tearooms that we frequent in Scotland, where it’s normal to be given a choice of flavours of home-made jam with your scone. I could go a lot further but I’ll leave it at that! Possibly it won a competition for Victorian style tea rooms.

If you are into books and you are near the town you will definitely enjoy visiting the shop Ex Libris. Within about seven minutes I had found seven or eight books that I just had to buy.

If you  love rivers and bridges as I do it’s almost worth visiting the town just for a look at this ancient bridge. We enjoyed our visit but it’s a ‘once in a lifetime’ visit for us as it’s a long drive from home.