Gee Whites
After a day serving cream teas and cakes in the courtyard of our Tea Room in Swanage we decided to change both scenery and food. We closed at half-five and ably assisted by Chloe our newest recruit had the place tidied-up, cleaned-down and reborn as a breakfast room for our B&B in the morning. We headed off to Gee Whites, also known as the Quay Hole or Mick's place after the owner. Like most things in Swanage the Stone Quay is only a few minutes walk away from us and we were settled down, enjoying the view by six-thirty.
Its different here with a constant movement and background hubbub, back at our Tea Room courtyard it is peaceful with few people passing by - both good in their own ways. Why were we not still open at our Tea Room you might be thinking. Well this (and similar) are part of the reason - having already worked a twelve hour shift with the prospect of the same every day until mid-September is the other part.
Jude had decided what she wanted to eat before we set out and it was my choice too so with a minimum of fuss and a surprisingly short wait our seafood platter was sitting in front of us.
It was seafood, on a platter, and plenty of it! Chewy whelks reminding me of Sunday morning visits to East Lane market with Dad; although here today we had chips and baguettes not the black bottomed cottage loaf of the past. We fought successfully and enjoyably with the crab. We could have paid an extra fiver and had it dressed but it would have halved the enjoyment, and anyway with no option to have staff undress prawns for us would have still got messy fingers and needed the finger bowl anyway!
It took us a good hour to work our way through it all - and then it was gone.
Could have lingered longer but duty called (guests to check in at our Swanage B&B) so off we went home having spent £30 for our platter, a couple of bottles of water and one small glass of wine. We don't do this every evening - but we could, and that's really nice to know.