This week, we bring you a brief member update, and this week's essay is on the British cultural habit of stopping for tea.

Also, come on England! We wish the England football team the best of luck in their match against Spain tonight in Berlin!

This week, we reached 76 members! Welcome to all the new members who have signed up to come along on this little journey of celebration of all things British. We hope you enjoy your time here in this warm, positive place on the internet. We are achingly close to our initial goal of 100 members to set up the new private chat room/forum. Hopefully, we will hit the goal in the next few weeks. I can't wait to show all of you the chat room; it's going to be so much fun!

When Americans travel, we tend not to stop. We don’t get much vacation time—most of us only get a week or so of actual vacation—so when we do travel, there is a lot of pressure on us to make the most of that time. We must make it worth it. We must fill every minute we’re not sleeping with sightseeing and activities because we can’t do these things when we’re back at work.

For many years, that’s how Anglotopia traveled to Britain. We always had limited time on our trips, so we filled every minute with an attraction, experience, or a meeting that needed to happen for Anglootpia. I don’t regret any of this. In those younger and more energetic days, we built up Anglotopia into what it is now, saw so many important things, gathered so much important material for research and all the articles we’ve written over the years, and met so many wonderful people - many of whom have become friends.

But at one point in 2016, I had a realization. Even as masters of our own destiny, running our own business, we could have, in theory, come to Britain for as long as we needed to; we didn’t need to cram it all in. So, our trips started to get a little longer. But in 2016, I still packed this trip with more things to do than we really had time. On the ground, while we were zipping around the Midlands of England, we were on our, I think, third or fourth stately home of the day. By that point, they’d all started to blend together. I couldn’t remember the details of each one. It was as if they were all now one giant stately home. I had what I dubbed Stately Home Fatigue.

Despite the enormous privilege of being able to visit so many important places in one day, we were sitting down for tea at one and realized that we needed to slow down. It wasn't a lightning bolt of inspiration or anything; I simply looked around and observed the British people around us. They weren’t in a hurry. This was a day out for them. Visiting this particular property was all they were going to do that day.

So, they stopped for tea.

And it’s that stopping for tea that created a major paradigm shift in our behavior while traveling. I realized that in all our travels to various stately homes and tourist attractions, pretty much everywhere has a tea room, and it’s almost always busy. Because either the first or last thing that native Brits do when they have a stately home day out is they stop for tea.

They take the time to stop and order tea, a cream tea, or a cake, sit down, and drink the entire pot while they enjoy their treat and talk to each other. They are in no particular hurry to go anywhere. The appeal of visiting a National Trust attraction wasn’t just the place itself; I realized it was the ability to sit in the cafe and have a nice cup of tea in a special place.

The entire economy of the United Kingdom is set up to facilitate the British person getting their cups of tea wherever they are. Every attraction will have a cafe. Even unexpected places like DIY Stores, garden centers, and antique malls will have a cafe on site. And the cup of tea will be GOOD. No one would tolerate a bad cup of tea; a place can't stay in business if the tea is no good! To be fair, it’s not hard to make a good cup of tea, but you’d be surprised!

This is not something we really don't do in the USA. We don’t stop for tea (leaving aside the fact that getting good tea is rather a challenge in most places). If people stop for anything, they stop for coffee, but they don’t stop for it—they go through the drive-thru and drink it on their way to somewhere else. We rarely get out of our cars and go into Starbucks and sit down. There’s not enough time to do that!

But the average visitor, to say Stourhead, isn’t going to hurry. They want to make the most of their day out (and the admission they’ve paid to get in—if they’re not members of the National Trust or the Royal Oak Foundation).

It was a revelation that instead of rushing to see every possible thing on our itinerary, we needed to slow down and stop and have a cup of tea and a peace of cake. This completely changed our travel experiences after that. Now we know. So when we plan our days out, or our itineraries, the first question we ask ourselves is, where can we stop for tea? If it’s a National Trust property, does it have a cafe (these are our favorites)?

And you know what happened after we started stopping for tea? We started to enjoy visiting these special places a lot more. We slowed down. We took the time to talk to each other or look through the brochure or guidebook about the place and learn about it - rather than just learning about it later when I got around to reading the stuff back home. It allowed us to walk through the houses and estates with more knowledge, more deliberately, so we truly understood where we were and why these places were so special. It made us more thoughtful and observant travelers.

Now, our trip memories are punctuated by where we stopped to have tea. This is a useful reference point when searching for pictures or a particular memory to write about.

Back in 2018, I visited the Lake District on my own for a writer’s retreat. My flight had arrived in Manchester that morning, and I’d driven a rental car two hours north to Penrith, where my hotel was. After I’d checked into my hotel, it was now early afternoon, and I was desperate for a cup of tea and a spot of cake. Looking at my various sources, I learned there was a National Trust property nearby, Aira Force Waterfall. That sounded like the perfect thing to do. And the map said it had a cafe.

Perfect, you’ll take yourself on a sunny summer walk through the woods to a famous waterfall, then reward yourself with a National Trust cafe cup of tea and cake. So, I drove over, parked the car, got the map of the attraction, and dutifully followed it to the waterfall, which was spectacular. I also discovered what foxgloves were, and beautiful purple flowers were growing everywhere along the path. And finally, I finished my walk and headed for the cafe near the car park. I approached it, hearing the familiar clanking sound of aluminum teapots and cutlery. My heart lifted; it was a hot walk, I was jetlagged, and all I wanted was tea and cake. 

When I arrived at the cafe at 3:59 p.m., they were locking up the place; it closed at 4. 

My heart sank.

No tea and cake.

I should have planned it better. But then, the whole point I’m making with this essay is that one shouldn’t plan so much. 

But perhaps one should at least plan the most important part of the day: stopping for tea. And make sure the cafe's hours align with your schedule!