Sunday 15 January 2012

What better way to start the day after a nice sleep in, is a breakfast of bacon, eggs mushrooms and tomatoes, lovingly prepared by The Man. 

Replete and with coffee in hand we both agree that it is much too nice a day to stay in. The weather is a repeat of yesterday. Out with the guide books and maps and after a bit of head scratching we decide that Waltham Abbey is to be our destination, and that we found out was easier said than done.

Beginning with, a crisp walk down to Crystal Palace Station and a quick run to Liverpool Street Station.

Easy part over. We missed the hourly direct train to Waltham Cross by a whisker. Bother, the next one isn’t due for another hour. So we, mistakenly we discovered later, decide to try getting there another way. The nice lady at the ticket office told us that there is another train service there from another station. What she does not tell us is that that service is also only hourly on a Sunday and that we have a short ten minutes to get there and catch the train. Which of course is more than a ten minute tube ride away, so we miss that one too. Not wanting to retrace our steps we decide to give it a go by bus. So back one train station, find the right bus stop, and after a short wait yes, there it is the bus to Waltham Cross. So far so good. What we hadn’t reckoned on was the length of time it would take the bus to reach its destination. 

 Now let’s go back and look at our timeframe here. We caught the 1207 from Crystal Palace and  arrived at Liverpool Street Station just after one pm. Having just missed that train, and spending about twenty minutes getting to the other station, where we missed the other train too, it is now almost half past one. On the bus by quarter to two we settle down for the run through an area we have not been through before. Well almost ninety minutes later there we are at Waltham Cross. After stopping briefly for lunch we decide to call it a day,  because it is now quite cold and if we catch the bus to the abbey there will not be a return bus for more than an hour. All is not lost, or so we thought, the chap in the ticket office says that the abbey is only about ten minutes’ walk from the station and the next train isn’t due for an hour. OK, off we go in the right direction, but the walk is more like twenty minutes and we still hadn’t reached the abbey. So turn around and back we go to the station.

 Ah well the day was not a total failure. We did have a day out, drove through a new area, and now know the best way to get to Waltham Abbey.