Fancy a Cuppa by the Cathedral?

Fancy a Cuppa by the Cathedral? takes you on a whistle-stop tour of the UK’s cathedrals and suggests the best place to go for a tea, coffee and cake afterwards. Yorkshire author Simon Duffin has produced the perfect guidebook to take on a day trip. You’ll get a sense of the cathedral’s place in history and the coffee shop or tea room’s place in the town centres of today.

Simon’s focus is on the stories our cathedrals can tell rather than the architecture or the theology. There are such stories as the Native American Chief buried in Southwark Cathedral graveyard; the Alice in Wonderland stories inspired by Lewis Carroll’s time as a choirboy; or the Portuguese Princess who landed in Portsmouth and demanded tea rather than beer before her wedding.

In seeking out places for a refreshing beverage after you’ve toured the cathedral, Fancy a Cuppa lists independent coffee shops and tea rooms that not only provide top-quality coffee and tea but also have an intriguing story behind them. Some of these are contemporary, others artisan and some sell themselves on their historic location. Seek out the wonderful tea room in Bristol named after the tea clipper captain who was the owner’s great grandfather; the coffee shop built right on Durham’s mediaeval walls; or the hotel in Westminster where spies swapped intelligence during the Cold War, but there are now 200,000 bees on the roof!

This is the perfect guidebook to have on your smartphone or tablet. In just a minute, you’ll have some quirky facts about the cathedral town or city you’re in, you’ll see the highlights from each of the cathedrals – across all denominations – and you’ll have a good idea where to go for a cuppa and cake!

“The motivation for my series of books so far has been the people who run tea rooms and coffee shops; their stories are often an inspiration to anybody who wants a new direction in life. The buildings of the coffee shops and tea rooms often have their own stories to tell, as do the cathedrals: taken together, they actually provide a potted history of the UK,” says Simon on his reasons behind his new ebook.