Tramways Cafe and Cycle Hire Centre

Lost for the third time in a day, we were delighted to stumble across a cyclist’s oasis in the midst of disused Cornish mining trails known as the Mineral Tramways.

If we’d come six weeks earlier we wouldn’t have been so lucky. Owner Liz Hart took over the Tramway Café and Cycle Hire Centre at the end of June and has done a fine job regenerating the place. Mind you she knows the business, having spent twenty two years running the cycle shop in Scorrier.

As we sat on the balcony eating ice creams, Liz and centre manager Martin Beck attended to two cycle damsels in distress who had worn through a tyre on a ‘cycle pootle’ around Cornish Villages. While Rose from the café served the damsels jacket potatoes, Martin organised a van to whisk them away to find a new tyre, leaving apprentice Sam to multi-task, manning the shop and tuning up the hire fleet.

As we left the last of the day trippers were returning their bikes for Sam to clean. As he worked off the muck with a brush, perhaps he was looking forward to finishing up and enjoying the freedom of his own ride home.