An interesting sunday

I saw a comment on a friend’s Facebook recently about a market at Morton Abbey Mills. So that is where The Man and I set off for today.

According to the blurb I discovered courtesy of Mr Google

Merton Abbey Mills

This craft village on the river Wandle is housed in the former Liberty silk- printing works, by the restored waterwheel which is in motion every weekend powering a pottery wheel in the Wheelhouse. There’s a bustling weekend market, pretty shops, a riverside pub and a wide range of food outlets including Caribbean, Thai, Italian, Brazilian and also a traditional carvery, threaded throughout the craft village.

The reality was somewhat different to what we thought. I guess when my friend went it was a much busier day. There were quite a few empty spaces where stall should have been perhaps. Don’t get me wrong, there were several stalls and a few crafty shops open, as well as a couple of eateries. I did buy a little handmade ornament decorated with a damselfly, appropriate as we saw lots of them in the reeds on the river bank.

After a stop for refreshments we did our usual thing and had a bit of a wander, letting our feet take us where they would.
And that was towards Mordon Hall Park. We have been here before, but it was a very pleasant place to visit.
The rose garden, though past its best showed off some very pretty blooms and I had the opportunity to take a few snaps of wildlife as you will see a bit later. 

There is a very nice café here and we had a very pleasant interlude watching the kids play in the garden while we had our lattes and coffee cake. We also had a look about the very well stocked garden and crafty shop there. And no I didn’t buy anything at all. 

As is our usual practice The Man and I looked for a different way to come back to Crystal Palace, and after a walk in the direction of the traffic noise we found a main road and not long after a bus stop where buses back left from.

While we were munching our coffee cake we heard a couple of sirens scream past and on the bus ride back we drove past  a couple of fire engines, lights a-blinking and kitted up crewmen all around. When the bus drew level we saw a ladder up to a first floor window. The Man said that he thought it must have been the heating that was causing a problem as he saw a fireman with the hose down the pipe into the boiler.
Initially there weren’t many other passengers on the top deck of the bus, and things were nice and quiet until that is a couple of loud mouthed young women got on. You’d have thought that they were talking to each other from a very long distance instead of just across the other side of the bus. Rough wasn’t the word for them, though if they had kept their mouths shut we would have thought they were pretty ordinary. They were in my mother words ,common as muck’