There used to be (sob) a wonderful website (sniff) which gave insightful reviews of the best places to draw breath and a coffee in the UK.  It was called Cosy Coffees.  It is much missed by me (sigh).

Cosy Coffees ground to a halt when the couple doing the reviews had a baby.  So the website was put into suspended animation.  The reviews are now a few years’ old, so slightly out of date but are still a great starting place to find coffee recommendations – they are so thorough and readable.  The clue is in the title – cosy coffees – so not just a place which serves good brown nectar but also a genuinely enjoyable location  (Main limitation – no full reviews north of Edinburgh – but there are also some overseas visits.)

So – check out this page for readers’ recommendations in advance of venturing into a new and unexplored coffee region….

http://cosycoffeeshops.co.uk/recommendations/

The places reviewed by the website creators feature city guides, e.g. York

This pic of the website page is not the full page, but gives you an idea of the clean layout and informal language.  The rest of the page goes on to recommend a further 3 cafes, before a few of “best of the rest”.

However, I love the name of the the last premise above – “Stanley & Ramona”… named after a mis-hearing of “standing room only”….!