SUMMER is within touching distance, and there are times when you just want a quick, light lunch before getting back into the great outdoors.

After a walk around Marske – up to Orgate force and then back via Pillimire Bridge where a large wooden water wheel, bereft of its mill, decays slowly by the beckside – we headed back into Richmond and decided, on a whim, to try the smallest tea room we could find.

The Scone Bar is certainly small. Wedged among the tall buildings of Trinity Church Square in the market place, it is a thin slice of a three-tiered cake. A smiley welcome greeted us and we found a table on the narrow, stone-flagged ground floor which has a subterranean feel. There are other eating nooks tucked away on ledges all the way up the steep stairs – this must be how a colony of seagulls feels as they perch on the side of a precipitous cliff – and the toilets are right at the top. The views from the summit are good, though, as you can look down and marvel at what appears to be a huge hole in the roof of WH Smith opposite.

Our drinks arrived promptly, and we were invited to ask if we wanted additional hot water to go with our tea for two. This was very welcome, because my wife likes her tea stewed so that it looks like the peaty water in the River Swale, while I prefer mine after the merest flirtation between leaves and water. Arguments always result as to the optimum brewing time – in fact, it could be said that tea strains our relationship – but they can usually be resolved by a pot of additional hot water. Some places only grudgingly offer up such an essential item of matrimonial harmony.

The Scone Bar, which has been open for two years, prides itself in its 20 types of scones, but we needed a main course first. There were two soups – spiced butternut squash or mixed vegetable – and three quiches (sundried tomato and mozzarella, three cheese and chive, or red Leicester and broccoli) and a full gamut of sandwiches. The rest of the family enthused over the genuine tastes and homemadeness of the soup (£4.60) and quiche (£7), which came with the house salad and included a nice touch of pine nuts, while I indulged myself with the other most expensive item on the menu: the ploughman’s platter at £7.

Considering I’d been charged a little bit more for quite a bit less on such a platter elsewhere in the dale only the previous weekend, this was jolly good value. I think after a hard morning’s ploughing, a man wants a smorgasbord of substantial tastes on his platter, and here I got a roll of ham, half a pork pie, three lumps of cheese (one, of course, Wensleydale), a dollop of coleslaw, a portion of house salad, five pickled onions and two scoops of condiments – one of pickle and the other of sun-dried tomato chutney. And a warm half a baguette.

It was more than enough to reinvigorate a ploughman for the furrows ahead.

We, though, needed to plough on through the scone menu.

There was some distraction from the cabinet of cakes – cookies and cream, orange and almond, chocolate fudge and lemon meringue pie – which loomed over our table, and a slogan on the wall seemed to encourage us: “A balanced diet is a cake in each hand”, it said.

But we really needed to sample the scones, which were about £1.70 each. There were those of the savoury variety – chilli cheese, or stilton and pine nut, for example – but we struggled to choose a sweet one. You could have had plain, and we rejected the lemon meringue, blueberry and vanilla, and date and walnut, and instead chose a ginger and honey, chocolate orange, and white chocolate and cranberry.

But that is only half the choosing. For 50p extra, you have a selection of 12 jams, preserves or chutneys to pore over to accompany your scone and then, to really top things off, for another 60p you get to choose whether or not to have a little pot of Cornish clotted cream.

We spread two jams and a clotted cream between the four of us.

The scones arrived dauntingly large (grandma snuck half of hers home in a serviette for tea) but perfectly warm and fluffy in the middle, and with the chill of the jam and cream on top, presented a variety of fruity tastes and temperatures. They were as good as it gets – the best bar scone, if you pronounce the word properly.

With plenty of drinks, and additional hot water, the bill for light lunch and scones for the four of us came to £41.15 – very good value, and, refreshed, we were on our way to make the most of the warm sun.

FOOD FACTS

The Scone Bar, Trinity Church Square, Richmond

Tel: 01748-518644

Email: eat@thesconebar.co.uk

Opening times: 10.30am-4pm (closed Wednesdays)

Dogs welcome on ground floor; disabled access is difficult

Ratings (out of ten): Food quality 7, Service 9, Surroundings 7, Value 8