Andrew Teather

Review of Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

I had my first weekend off since March and had fam...

I had my first weekend off since March and had family staying. Where do you want to go I said, Kew Gardens was the reply, so I booked online. There were seven of us, from two households, and I think, given my occupation, that I understand the current guidelines. We went in fine, lovely staff at the gate, some things were closed, but no problem, the gardens are beautiful and it was good to be out. We went for lunch - queued up, a nice lady came and gave us some menus to look at while we waited. I said there s seven of us yeah, no problem . We ordered at the till, a nice lady took the order and we sat down outside. The tables were set for six, so we moved a table over and a chair. The move was a lateral one, so any distancing would have been uncompromised by it. Then a waiter came over, with a guy behind him wielding a clipboard. Clipboard Guy immediately said there s two problems here, one is that you can t move furniture and one is that you can t sit at a table of more than six . No hello , no acknowledgement of the fact that by this point I d spent two hundred and thirty quid, no acknowledgement of a shared humanity even. I explained that we were from two households, that the move was a lateral one, that we had queued and ordered as a group of seven, but he was genuinely, really, rude. I pointed out that two of our party were children - one eleven - and he said she s too old . So we moved, as there seemed no choice. The food was fine, the gardens were beautiful, but the experience was, after that, awful. I was pleased to see that we were directly under a cctv camera, which may prove useful.