Primarily for general aviation discussion, but other aviation topics are also welcome.
  • 1
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16
By Jon Mercer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1276131
I know. You're ahead on points at the moment for putting an apostrophe in the plural husky's. Very naughty. :naughty:
By Jon Mercer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1276139
Poor AB's eyes will be bleeding at seeing such flagrant elk hound and apostrophe abuse. :roll:
By Jon Mercer
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1276142
You know I thought about that right after I hit the Post button... :lol:
By fuzzflyer
#1276708
Shobdons new owners of the Hotspur cafe are doing a great job, music nights, great food and a great bar.. and onsite reasonable accommodation makes it worth an overnight-er..
Music is Friday evenings..
User avatar
By AerBabe
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1277228
Marj & Jon ... :sleeping:
User avatar
By Paul_Sengupta
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1284953
Ok, I haven't visited yet, but I have finally got round to replying to this thread after a while...

Regarding the coffee, it doesn't surprise me. There's coffee as a taste and coffee as a drink. We drink a lot of instant coffee in this country, and coffee is generally regarded as a drink - something to quench your third, some liquid to have with your breakfast. Similar in the US but with less instant. Some countries may do an espresso and a glass of water for separating the two, but we don't do that here so much. Filter coffee is better than instant, and still fulfils the "drink" role.

Fits in with my comments on page 10.

Regarding pricing, the standard burgers seem a little cheap to me...! :shock:

Also "Lunch Time - 12:00pm until 3:30pm" - one thing that gets a lot of complaints in the flying circles I inhabit (nothing to do with personal interest of course ;-) ) is that hot food at airfields closes early. Many renting pilots get the aeroplane for a slot at some point in the day and would like to eat at their destination...they can't always choose to make that lunchtime. Even driving in somewhere for food, it's often a case of "nah, they stop serving food at x". I don't know how difficult it is to stay open later at weekends or perhaps make sandwiches and baguettes available later?
By Joe Dell
#1284975
For those of you who've perhaps been giving Bagby a miss since it reverted to bacon butties. Normal service is now restored.

I had an excellent full English with tea and toast the other day, for a fiver. Other tasty meals were on offer at Yorkshire prices. Thanks Jean.

No landing fee if you pick up some of their cheap fuel. Only £5 if you don't.

I'm told that people are paying the price of four meals at Bagby with a sandwich to go, just to land at Shoreham. Surely not. :shock:
User avatar
By peter272
#1284984
Paul_Sengupta wrote: Also "Lunch Time - 12:00pm until 3:30pm" - one thing that gets a lot of complaints in the flying circles I inhabit (nothing to do with personal interest of course ;-) ) is that hot food at airfields closes early. Many renting pilots get the aeroplane for a slot at some point in the day and would like to eat at their destination...they can't always choose to make that lunchtime. Even driving in somewhere for food, it's often a case of "nah, they stop serving food at x". I don't know how difficult it is to stay open later at weekends or perhaps make sandwiches and baguettes available later?


That's very true

What restaurants fail to realise is that if the day is a good one, we'll fly further, so land later. Too many times I've turned up 10 minutes after the kitchen shut!

Compton Abbas, and how they do it I don't know, is busy throughout the day. Others tend to wind up between 2.30 and 3.00.

My home airfield is like that. On our return from an away-day the kitchen is shut and staff focussed on providing drinks for the locals. It's like walking into a social club or disco of which you are not a member and are not welcome.
User avatar
By Dave W
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1284991
peter272 wrote:Compton Abbas, and how they do it I don't know, is busy throughout the day. Others tend to wind up between 2.30 and 3.00.


On a flying day, a significant proportion of their customers appear to be on a family day out.

There are pilots and enthusiasts, sure, like anywhere else, but their trick is to be welcoming, be sensibly priced, have a clean comfortable environment inside and out, and - yes, it helps - have a stunning view across the airfield into the Blackmore Vale and to Shaftesbury.

Not everybody has the views, but the rest should be possible anywhere.
User avatar
By TLRippon
#1284993
Paul_Sengupta wrote:Ok, I haven't visited yet, but I have finally got round to replying to this thread after a while...

Regarding the coffee, it doesn't surprise me. There's coffee as a taste and coffee as a drink. We drink a lot of instant coffee in this country, and coffee is generally regarded as a drink - something to quench your third, some liquid to have with your breakfast. Similar in the US but with less instant. Some countries may do an espresso and a glass of water for separating the two, but we don't do that here so much. Filter coffee is better than instant, and still fulfils the "drink" role.

Fits in with my comments on page 10.

Regarding pricing, the standard burgers seem a little cheap to me...! :shock:

Also "Lunch Time - 12:00pm until 3:30pm" - one thing that gets a lot of complaints in the flying circles I inhabit (nothing to do with personal interest of course ;-) ) is that hot food at airfields closes early. Many renting pilots get the aeroplane for a slot at some point in the day and would like to eat at their destination...they can't always choose to make that lunchtime. Even driving in somewhere for food, it's often a case of "nah, they stop serving food at x". I don't know how difficult it is to stay open later at weekends or perhaps make sandwiches and baguettes available later?


For you Paul, the burger is now £12- Happy? :)

Lunch time winds up at 15:30 but we are open until 17:00 with sandwiches, baguettes, cakes and coffee and in reality we often don't finish cooking until 16:00 if the sun is out. If you think about it though, a cook's day starts at 08:00 with breakfast prep and goes on through lunchtime, it's a standard working day. If you cook longer than that you need a second cook and the economics go out the window.
User avatar
By Paul_Sengupta
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1285012
TLRippon wrote:For you Paul, the burger is now £12- Happy? :)


I'll get the steak one then! :D

Regarding the chef, I'd just assumed it would be done as two part time jobs. At least on the weekend.
User avatar
By TLRippon
#1285046
Paul_Sengupta wrote:
TLRippon wrote:For you Paul, the burger is now £12- Happy? :)


I'll get the steak one then! :D

Regarding the chef, I'd just assumed it would be done as two part time jobs. At least on the weekend.


This is an interesting point. Many airfields by their nature are a long way from the nearest population centre. There are not vast pools of local cooks willing to travel out to do this sort of job with suitable qualifications, i.e.able to cook and manage a team of servers. There are plenty of jobs in catering right where they live, so why travel. We are open 59.5 hours per week and have 2 cooks, one full time, one part time and I consider myself lucky to have found them in an area with no public transport to speak of and a huge choice of catering jobs just 5 miles away in Northampton (where they both live).
User avatar
By GrahamB
FLYER Club Member  FLYER Club Member
#1290142
Last weekend we hosted the annual European bash for Grumman owners at Sywell. Nearly eighty pilots and partners arrived from as far afield as Finland and the Czech Republic, most flying, with a fair sprinkling of US cousins arriving commercially. Naturally, we all stayed in the Aviator, although we went offsite for our banquet dinner.

Our arrivals day was Friday, and it was superb to have the Pilots Mess as a venue to which to send our guests for lunch and snacks. Lawrence arranged to have event cup-cakes made, iced with the organisation logo, which we handed out as freebies to them all. Without exception, they thought the warm welcome they got from the team there, the good value food, and the venue overlooking the apron were excellent.

Top man, top airfield caff. Thanks again Lawrence. :thumright:
User avatar
By TLRippon
#1290210
Graham, It was a pleasure to have you all come by. Look forward to seeing you in the future. Many thanks, Lawrence.
User avatar
By joe-fbs
#1324551
I have just posed this question in an ATIS post about Old Sarum but thought it might be of interest here as well. Phoning Old Sarum yesterday to check before setting out to fly-in, the person answering was most surprised when I said that we were specifically coming for the reported good quality of the cafe. She seemed totally surprised that anyone would care about such a thing. Are we foodie types on Flyer a minority or do airfields just not do research?
  • 1
  • 12
  • 13
  • 14
  • 15
  • 16