Saturday 30 November - St. Mary Cray and Orpington

To get to St. Mary Cray we had to take Thameslink from St. Pancras and change at Blackfriars.  We just missed the train at Blackfriars and had to wait half an hour for the next one whch stopped at all stations and took about 45 minutes.  We walked through Cray to find the model shop which was stacked to the roof but with very little order.

It had been foggy first thing and cold and this persisted on and off during the day. We walked back to Orpington passing the Anglesea Arms which seems not to be a pub any more.  The houses along the bank at Court Rad do not seem to have changed much. There is now a funeral director's office in Carleton Parade.

We walked through the Priory which is overrun with geese and I was surprised to find that the Wetherspoon pub is now a furniture store so there are now no decent pubs in Orpington (discounting the White Hart and The Maxwell.

This reads a bit like the Monty Python Spam sketch. 
"You can have anything you like providing it contains eggs and bacon"

We escaped Orpington on a fast train first stop London Bridge than Waterloo. The Ian Allan book store was interesting but contained little of modelling interest.

We decided to walk to Borough Market which was very crowded but we managed to find Melton Mowbray pork pies for lunch and then walked along the embankment to Tower Bridge where the Anchor pub was its normal quiet and the publican was almost smiling.

We fought the crowds back to Tower Hill then on the Underground back to Kings Cross.