Shoreham Aircraft Museum's Tea Room: Scones, Spitfires and a Red Baron Serving Bacon

Behind the Shoreham Aircraft Museum on the High Street in Shoreham Village sits a tea room that's as much a part of the village's rhythm as the museum it's attached to - a stop for walkers and cyclists passing through, with homemade cakes, a sunny tea garden, and occasionally a volunteer dressed as the Red Baron serving the bacon doorsteps.

The Tea Room serves tea, coffee, soft drinks and homemade scones, cakes and pastries at what the museum describes as very reasonable prices, with seating in a tea garden when the weather allows. It's open every weekend all year round, 10am to 4pm, and doubles as a gallery for aviation art prints by Geoff Nutkins, one of the museum's founders.

The Tea Room is a genuine waypoint rather than just a museum add-on: it's a popular stop for the ramblers and cyclists who pass through Shoreham Village, and is listed in the Cyclists' Touring Club guide. Shoreham sits in north-west Kent just outside the M25, reached via the A225 - a part of the Darent Valley that draws a steady trickle of walking and cycling traffic between Eynsford, Otford and the North Downs.

The museum itself was founded in 1978 by local enthusiasts and opened its permanent display in 1988, an occasion attended by 15 former Battle of Britain fighter pilots. It houses relics excavated from crashed British and German aircraft alongside flying helmets, uniforms and Home Front memorabilia, and all proceeds go towards its Local RAF Memorials Project, which has erected memorials to Battle of Britain pilots who died within a 10-mile radius of Shoreham. Museum entry is £5 for adults, with under-16s and museum members going free, and it's open Easter to Remembrance Sunday, Saturdays and Sundays, 10am to 4pm - though the Tea Room itself runs year-round.

Source: Shoreham Aircraft Museum