One thing that I absolutely adore is afternoon tea. I’ll easily give up a meal in order to fit in an afternoon of triangular sandwiches, miniature cakes and tea. One of the most interesting afternoon tea spots is Bygone Beautys in Leura.

With over 3800 teapots housed in this deceptively large space, it’s also a vintage shop full of all things luxurious and olde world, from scalloped fabric silk chairs, elaborate candelabras and of course all sorts of teacups and teapots.

Our traditional afternoon tea setting

We’ve called ahead to see whether they’re open and the woman on the phone asked if we’ll be having the traditional tea as it takes 20 minutes to set up. We’re a little confused as we didn’t think there was that much more preparation needed for it than a regular order but we say yes to a traditional afternoon tea for 2 ($49.50 for 2 people, additional people $19.50). While we’re there we also order a Devonshire tea $11.50 and a Petite order of sandwiches with 6 points for $11.00. Our waitress is warm and friendly and asks us if we’d like them all brought at once which we do.

The Pomp and Ceremony!

We’re given our sugar, milk and 5 minutes later, we hear the song “Land of Hope and Glory” booming through the room. Our smiling waitress has returned in top hat and tails and is pushing a impressive looking trolley bearing two British flags playing the Pro British tune. We’re stunned and pleasantly so, everyone is excited when they see this and we see many flashes go off.

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One cherished thing that we discovered when at our last trip to the Blue Mountains in Winter (what were we thinking? It was truly bone chillingly cold) was the crushed Apple Juice by Logan Brae orchards. Its something of a local favourite apparently and if you could imagine biting into a sweet juicy apple and the juice that runs out of it, you can imagine the juice here. Its so pure, preservative free, almost clear in colour and so deliciously good, we were looking forward to buying up big.

Unfortunately, during our Christmas visit when we rang ahead, the orchard store was only open for one hour on a Sunday as the apples weren’t yet harvested and since we weren’t here for a Sunday we had to buy it from a fruit store in downtown Katoomba.

The advantage of buying from the orchard store is buying the apples themselves, along with apple jelly and the bottles are of course less expensive at $4 for a 3 litre pale hued bottle. In the store, they are $6.50 a bottle. Nevertheless the juice is such a family favourite that we bought the fruit store out of their entire supply. They were a little shocked to say the least.

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It takes me a good 2-3 hours to get through the small strip of shops on one side of Leura Mall. So that’s probably why I never made it up the stairs to the Nook. The goods on sale were more my family in law’s style but the one display that intrigued me was of course food related. When I asked, they told me that the man that makes the jams (presumably Jack of Faye and Jack) is 84 years old, jam making keeps him young and like a lot of small homemade companies, the price hasn’t changed for a long time.

From the laminated sign, I could see they were big winners in country shows and the Sydney Royal Easter show and having a look at the strawberry jam (my favourite flavour) I could see that they were very chunky and full of fruit, the way I like it (although there was some inconsistency with the level of fruit in some jars). Picking the jar most packed full of fruit, I also selected another judge’s favourite, the passionfruit butter. My husband is not a huge lemon butter fan so I thought that Passionfruit might be more to his taste. Smaller jars like the Passionfruit butter are $4 and large jams are $5. An absolute steal really.

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