The Copper Kettle Tea Room — Restaurant in Wales

An honest review of the Skirrid View Shepard’s hut (part of the Copper Kettle Tea Room & same owners)

We stayed at the Skirrid view hut in August and had an unfortunate end to a lovely stay. The hut is ideally located in a really picturesque area with a hot tub that adds a real treat. The hut has everything you need & we found the first part of our stay really peaceful. We suffered a lot with flies & the heat in the hut but it was in the middle of a heatwave, uncharacteristic of Wales and so little could be done. The owners did provide a small fan which we were grateful for.

However, things took a turn at the end of our stay which means we can only review 1 star and would absolutely not recommend this stay to anyone.

We left our windows open when we went for dinner one evening. During this time a storm stirred and the owners were able to shut the windows for us. We hadn’t expected the sudden weather change and so hadn’t left the windows on the latch, though it was requested at the start. This is the one and only mistake we made on this trip.

The next morning we were aggressively confronted. The owner strolled to our hut saying ‘what makes you think you don’t have to follow the rules?!’ We laughed, believing there to be a joke somewhere in this but the owner was visibly fuming. He continued to chastise us for leaving the window off the latch. He was right. We shouldn’t have done this. We apologised and agreed but justified that we did this because of the awful heat. A bottle of alcohol had exploded in the heat inside the hut the previous day- covering the hut in disaronno and we wanted to keep it well ventilated to avoid repeat.

This was unacceptable.

We were then told that we had left the windows open before without putting them on the latch- we apologised again & said we wished he had warned us of this on the first occasion. The weather was 33 degrees- why would we not ventilate a small Shepard’s hut? The response we got for this was ‘you’re not 12- I shouldn’t have to tell you things twice.’ We strongly feel age was in fact the issue here- we are in our late 20s and doubt we would have been served this level of aggression and disrespect had we been of a similar age to the owners.

A fight followed with such aggression from the owner that left me in tears- asking him to leave me alone to collect myself for ten minutes. He refused and continued to shout at us about the apparent ‘disrespect we had shown to the hut.’ Let us be clear, all we did was leave the window open. A mistake.

To spare you all the details of what followed a horrible, hostile hour- we decided to leave. The owner told us he would ‘post our deposit.’ We refused this and asked him to inspect the perfect huts so that would could gather our money and leave. Several times we asked to stop arguing and let us go, with our £50 but he was gunning for a fight.

Eventually, his kind wife was able to give us the deposit as the huts were left in perfect state.

However, this did not happen before the male owner PHYSICALLY ASSAULTED my boyfriend,pushing him against a wall in front of a large crowd of locals at the cafe. He said he had ‘barged past him’ but this is so far from the truth- luckily my boyfriend remained cool headed.

Thankfully the wife saw me in tears over the abuse we had taken & returned our money- no kind words can be said about...

Nice food but disorganised and unprofessional service.

We had to wait an hour for two bacon sandwiches and even longer for a bowl of chips that was ordered at the same time.

When we complained, we were told that we had to appreciate that they were a small kitchen and that waiting an hour for sandwiches was reasonable.

We were also told not to return! We’ve eaten there a number of times before but won’t be back. Awful customer service!

Be warned that orders are cooked as they arrive, and not considered by what is ordered. So if you order a bacon sandwich after someone else has ordered cooked breakfasts, your bacon will not be cooked at the same time! If they’re busy, be prepared to wait a long time for your food, no matter...

I arrived at 2pm after hiking Skirrid Fawr, sadly to be told the kitchen had closed, which I felt was rather early for a tea room. This was a shame but I did have a takeaway coffee.

The coffee was so hot, I kid you not that it took 45 minutes for it to reach a ‘drinkable temperature’ sadly with the water being so hot it had left a horrible taste to coffee.

For note for the lady serving coffee:

Too cool (205°F / 96°C) → over-extraction: bitter, astringent, harsh flavors.

Just right (195–205°F / 90–96°C) → balanced oils, acids, and sugars for a full-bodied cup.

And Yes my nickname is Goldilocks…...