Day 3 September 10th A foray into Essex from Stratford

view from window

The view from bedroom when we woke up included the London stadium, once the Olympic stadium but now the home of West Ham United football club.  Before we moved to Scilly one of the places where I used to work was bulldozed and is now I believe the aquadrome.  We chose to stay at Stratford for 3 reasons.  It is easy to get to from Paddington (it will be even easier once crossrail is completed), it is on a direct rail route to Dover from where our cruise boat is sailing and thirdly it is convenient to travel into Essex if we could meet up with family and friends.  Today we used the third benefit to visit our very good friends, Ian & Ruth, whom we had missed seeing earlier in the year.

muntjacs at South Weald

 We left Stratford and Shenfield was just one stop along the line.  Ian met us at the station and we were soon at Silver Birches.  We had some coffee, a good catchup and met Charlottes's boyfriend.  We had a snack lunch and then decided to go to the nearby South Weald Country Park.  We fed some of the muntjac deer that live there and some ducks on the pond.   We walked round the lake and had a quick look at the Country Fayre which was on that day.  We said our farewells to Charlotte at the carpark as they headed back to Lancaster.



Ruth, Ian, Charlotte and boyfriend

We returned to the house more chatting, a lovely meal and caught the train back to Stratford at about 9pm.  A very enjoyable day catching up with very good friends.