I’d never been to the village of Farndon before I visited the cafe. It’s off the A534 which is one of the most dangerous roads in the country and leads to a town I don’t particularly like. Google Maps made the village look quite interesting with it’s curved high street and church green but it’s not quite as exciting in real-life though it’s certainly not a dump judging by the properties I saw as I drove into the village.

So I was optimistic when I saw the facade of Lewis’s with it’s fancy sign promising speciality coffee. I entered past a small seating area out-front where you can stare at an empty interiors shop and inhale diesel particulates from the road.

The interior was a bit of a let down. Walls are red and magnolia with a few bit of decent art to buy if you so desired. The menu was limited to a few sandwiches, fry-ups and enormous cakes. These were presumably for local ruddy-faced farmers as banging a ewe gives you an appetite. I asked for gf toast and she reacted as if she hadn’t been asked about this before.  I had to make do with wholemeal. This is 2019 Farndon!

Chairs and tables are yawny with red or black tub chairs which could have been pinched from a cheap cafe in Wigan. Dark dull oak tables and chairs but there are a couple of good views to be had by the window if you want to gaze outside. Floor is boarded and the toilet and wifi is decent. A few handbags and mugs are for sale too if you can take the additional excitement.

On a 20c day, there were a few saddle-sore lycra wearers slurping their hard-earned capus and a few middle-class locals looking spaced-out liked they had just been watching Channel 5 for a couple of hours. A couple of blokes then entered green wax jackets and capped looking farmery but looking either semi-backward, semi-rural or both perhaps.

But I was more concerned with the wasp problem. I killed six of these jaspers in the space of half-an-hour. Maybe the owners put in a nest to make the cafe more interesting.

The coffee was fine but this place is all too meh. It’s OK I suppose but wouldn’t be getting a strange lad on a tractor to drive me across the fields to get to it.

Verdict: 3/5

Good:

Coffee, toilets, wifi, art

Bad:

No gf, dull interior, wasps, not that cosy.