Detour Pit Stop #32: Britain's best motorway services
Ian Cylkowski / Unsplash
Making a pit stop on a British motorway is seldom a pleasant experience. Increasingly dominated by fast food chains and supermarkets, they’re a soulless necessity for a caffeine kick and a fill of fuel. But there is one very notable exception.
Tebay Services on the M6 in Cumbria isn’t just somewhere to break your journey it deserves to be the destination in its own right.
Founded in 1972 by local farmers John and Barbara Dunning when the new motorway was cut through their land, Tebay is like no other services in the land.
Traditional-looking timber buildings sit in place of drab prefabricated concrete, overlooking the beautiful mountainscape.
Instead of a chain supermarket there’s a farm shop, replacing McDonald’s or Burger King is a family-run kitchen serving local produce. Think delicious meaty stews and pies, and an outside BBQ if you really do need that burger. Or if you can wait until you get home to eat then there’s an incredible butchery selling beef and lamb from the family farm, a deli and a patisserie.
You can stay at the onsite hotel and eat in its restaurant and all the while you will be supporting the local community, not helping some multinational conglomerate.
“I think a lot of the public they do hanker to get back to food which they recognise and value of service that they recognise which are sometime slots in modern society,” says Dunning.
Next time you’re on the M6 do make sure to make this very worthwhile pit stop.
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