Chester café given national lifetime achievement award for serving cyclists

By Victoria Heywood
Tuesday, 09 October 2018
Eureka Café, in Two Mills Chester, has been given the Lifetime Achievement award by the national cycling charity Cycling UK in its annual Cyclist Café of the Year awards.

Current owner Anne Peak has been running Eureka Café for the past 17 years, but the café has been going much longer than that, having first opened in 1929.

Anne said: "This award is not just for us, it is for our amazing customers too. It is the people who make a place. So many of them have stories to tell about cycling in the area - Eureka is a real community.

"We are only a little café, but it's a place where people love to come by bike to."

Popular items on the menu include 'beans and spare' - which is beans on toast with extra toast. There is also the special cheese mixture, a recipe passed down from the original founders of the café. 

Eureka has an interesting history; the name is supposedly from when a sailor returned to Two Mills looking for his long-lost love, and on finding her shouted “Eureka!”

Cycling UK’s Cyclist Café of the Year awards were announced on Saturday; there were four other winners, for England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland as well as the Lifetime Achievement award. Hundreds of cafés around the UK were nominated across the five categories online, with a shortlist for each then poured over by a panel of experts.

Eureka Café was nominated by its cyclist customers, who praised the café’s delicious range of food, welcoming atmosphere and iconic local status.

Matt Mallinder, Membership Director at Cycling UK said: “Cyclists depend on great cafes as a place to reenergise with cakes and hot drinks and meet up with others during a day out. These awards say thank you to those cafes whose staff go the extra mile to provide tired cyclists with a friendly face, tasty food and comfy place to take a break.

“Eureka Café has an incredible history and has clearly been loved by generations of cyclists. It deserves the Lifetime Achievement award and we wish Anne all the best for keeping it going into the future.”

Notes to editors

  1. Cycling UK, the national cycling charity, inspires and helps people to cycle and keep cycling, whatever kind of cycling they do or would like to do. Over a century’s experience tells us that cycling is more than useful transport; it makes you feel good, gives you a sense of freedom and creates a better environment for everyone. www.cyclinguk.org
  2. Images of Eureka Café and the other winners can be found here: https://www.skyfish.com/p/cyclinguk/1328332
  3. More about Eureka Café can be found on its website: www.eurekacyclistscafe.co.uk
  4. The other winners were Café Velo for England, Bow Bells in County Down for Northern Ireland, Velocity in Inverness for Scotland, and I want to ride my bike café, bar and workshop in Cardiff for Wales. The results of the Cyclist Café of the Year awards were announced on Saturday 6 October at Cycling UK’s Big Bike Celebration in Harrogate.

Press contact information

For more information, interview requests and images contact the national Cycling UK Press Office on 01483 238 315, 07786 320 713 or email [email protected]

Cyclist Cafe of the Year

Further reading