Strid Wood Tea Rooms - Craven

DONT BOTHER with this over priced and nasty little place. As soon as you arrive the staff charge out and aggresively demand you pay for parking. We were going in!!!! We had two pieces of old dry cake and luke warn tea. There was a human nail in one of the cake slices. Utterly disgusting experience. Never again.

I have visited several times now and everything I have loved being there. The staff are very friendly, kind and helpful. The place is very clean and the food display is so inviting with a wide variety to choose from. I highly recommend visiting the tea room after a walk.

Never has this place let us down, with very friendly service, and great food cooked exactly to my specifications. I love the gift shop. Others report food running out, as do other places where custom demand, versus lack of staff, who work seven days, a week, this is nothing out of the ordinary on occasion. I can only comment negatively on one thing, the poor staff have to man the extortionatly priced car parking, alongside running a lovely tearoom, which they do so well, which leads to heavier workload. Regardless, they never complain.....fabulous as always, Diane and Nicci.

Having read reviews on TripAdvisor I had some trepidation stopping here and though we didn't have any issues there is a fundamental problem for the Tearoom workers that causes so much friction/trouble. The car park here is one of 3 on the Bolton Abbey Estate visitors can use to access the walking routes. Unfortunately, access to these car parks comes with a single £15 charge. No problem, if you have paid at one of the said 3 for that access but if stopping at the Tearooms just for the tearoom or gift shop you still have to pay which obviously no one wants to do just to have a cup of tea etc. The poor staff are constantly fighting the same battle with such visitors and the mistake that has been made is unlike say the RHS Gardens in Harrogate where you can visit Betty's Tearoom without having to pass through a manned separate entrance, here the staff are covering both the cafe and the car park access charge. There is no charge for accessing the walking routes or Abbey just the car park so as a business model it's a disaster. Beyond this frankly dumb method it appears the staff are a little fraught and edgy as we witnessed curt responses to queries regarding food availability (non). Outside the seating is broken/old and inside there is little seating and a disorganised feel to the layout and what can be bought in both gifts and food. It's a bit of a car crash all around basically.

Food was nice albeit expensive and we would have preferred to have eaten using actual crockery and NOT paper plates and cups. I don't think this is too much to expect considering the prices charged!!