“When you grow up you’ll learn to like tea!” That’s what my family said. They were kind of right, but it was more the fact that I learned there’s more on offer in the whole tea experience than just English tea … with milk! There’s jasmin tea and mint tea and mango tea and green tea – all of which I’m quite happy to drink. None of them can push coffee off the first place in my hot drink favourites list though and none of them come with milk! Milk goes in hot chocolate!

I’d never bothered with the idea of Afternoon Tea before because at first I thought it was just tea and scones. I will eat a scone –(scone rhymes with gone by the way), – but without the jam and cream! Anyway, it was only when I started reading posts by bloggers like Kerry and Gemma that I realised afternoon was about much more than that. It is an experience! Even better, a lot of places let you swap out the tea for coffee!

So a friend and I decided to do afternoon tea one afternoon at the end of August to celebrate her birthday.

Oakley Hall is a hotel in north Hampshire. I’d been to a couple of events there, but I discovered that they do afternoon tea as well, so I booked us in for a weekday afternoon, which turned out to be a smart thing to do as it was really quiet and relaxing.

What did we have?

There was quite an extensive tea menu, but I can’t really tell you much about that because we both chose coffee!

When the stand came, we pretty much shared it out equally unless there was something someone didn’t like.

There was a selection of four finger sandwiches each, either in bread or cute little rolls. I’d mentioned my allergy beforehand and they made sure that there was nothing on the stand that I was allergic to. This should be normal practice, but I always get the feeling that some places care more than others about getting it right, so I light to highlight good practice when I come across it!

There was so much food on the stand, we knew we’d be taking some home. I’m a savoury kind of girl, so I finished my sandwiches, planned to take the scones, and then went for the desserts that A. sounded most delicious and B. would not travel so well!

In the “sounded most delicious” category, one of the first things I tried was a banoffee boat – a carefully crafted biscuit shell with a banana and cream filling, topped with chocolate!

There was a delicate little cake with a strawberry on top, so I had that next, along with both lemon macaroons, because B didn’t want hers!

It was lovely to sit and chat over our afternoon tea. The staff were around if we needed anything, and we didn’t feel under any pressure to leave. We went after about an hour and a half because I had to get back for a meeting, but I think we could have easily stayed there a bit longer. I was definitely full though by the time I left and a bit high on sugar! (It used to be a joke that I could deal with alcohol, but too much sugar was a problem!)

Anyway, some of the cakes were slices, so we chopped them in half and filled our take-away boxes! This meant that S could get some too, including the Victoria sponge, the caramel slice (very good, but a little much caramel for me), and the cherry cake (which apparently looked unusual because it was green, but which was actually really good!)

This was my first afternoon tea and I can see why people keep going back to them. I understand it’s a different atmosphere at the themed ones because you have the room all decorated to suit the theme and there are many more people there, but if you’re just a couple of friends who want to mark a special occasion or have a good old catch up, this is a good way to do it!

Have you been to any good afternoon teas lately?

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