Tebay Service Station

John King (10 June 2007)

We stopped at Tebay Services for lunch on Sunday 10th June, after reading some positive reviews and seeing it named as Britain’s Best Service Station on tv. We arrived just on noon, as staff were putting the lunch selection on display. Our meals were as follows: Cumberland Sausage, veg and gravy; One 8 item All Day Breakfast; one regular pot of coffee and one mug of cappuccino.

The Cumberland sausage was just that, one sausage! It came with a choice of mashed or roast potato (but not both!) and garden peas, mashed carrot and cabbage, and a splash of gravy. Come on guys! Vegetables are not expensive! Neither is gravy! This was a tight portion! The girl serving left the centre of the plate empty. Was something missed off?! A better value portion needed here for the thick end of £5.

The 8 Item Breakfast. Nothing was drained before being added to the plate, leaving the food basking in a sea of tomato juice and vegetable oil. At least the toast was served on a separate plate and so stayed dry. The Hash Browns oozed veg oil when put under a little pressure, very off-putting.

The Pot of Coffee was good. A nice strong pot of filter coffee, no complaints on that one, except we had to sort through nearly a whole tray of cups to find one not still full of flotsam from the dishwasher. The cups clearly were not well rinsed.

The 'mug' of cappuccino. Yes, the poster clearly stated 'MUG'. I was served a half empty mug of cappuccino and given the excuse from the counter staff that she 'usually uses a cup but there are none left, the measure in the mug is a standard measure but looks less in the bigger mug.' Hang on, either this is a half empty MUG of coffee, or its a cup of coffee, in a mug. I was paying £1.90 for the advertised MUG of coffee. In the end I felt that the biggest mug was the one paying for it... ME!

The service. We waited patiently for the lunch menu to be put on display. Only fair, after all we did arrived just before midday and if lunch is only served from midday, then a short wait was to be expected. Meals were served quickly and we moved to the drinks counter-cum-checkout. With only one member of staff doing both jobs, we had to stand around and wait to be served drinks (see above) and pay for our meals. So the food is already starting to go cold. After much adoing we finally paid then went to get our cutlery to find that there were no knives. Another wait, food getting colder. A few minutes after asking for more knives, they arrive and finally we can sit down to enjoy our Sunday lunch. Well, once we had cleared ourselves a table. Mountains of pots stacked on tables and on the window ledges near to the clean up area. Every table needed clearing! We found a not-too-bad table, shifted the previous occupants' dirty crockery and finally sat down to 'enjoy' our meal at the nations Best Motorway Services.

We don’t go into these places expecting a la carte food and silver service. Average food served in a nice environment would have been acceptable, or even just a warm welcome in a greasy spoon with quantity making up for quality. Tebay Westmoreland achieved neither, which is a shame because it used to be proud of its family-run status. It used to be a bit grubby but the good food, reasonable prices and warm welcome more than made up for it. The revamped building in no way justifies the loss of all the other good points. Tebay, unfortunately, has become just another corporate service station, without the corporation.