Sunday the 23rd was another fine sunny day, and we piled back into the French tractor for another nice drive thought the countryside... Unsurprisingly we were off to another British country pub, this one in a village in the vicinity of High Wycombe, for a gathering of my lovely's mother's family and the largest gathering of my future in-laws so far. There were several special events to celebrate including recent arrival, a recent wedding, and of course a certain engagement.
It was great to see everyone and finally meet a couple more relatives who we had not been able to catch up with last time around. As always everyone was lovely and I feel very much like a member of the family already, albeit a slightly larger, less stylish, funny-talking one. A very nice lunch of roast and English ale was followed, naturally, by a walk in the outdoors... our large gaggle followed the path down out of the village with various dogs in tow (very doggy people these) and popped through a gap in a hedge and headed off across the open fields. In other parts of the world this would probably get you shot at by enraged farmers, but in the UK this is classed as recreation. It was a nice spot for a ramble though, and we watched as several gliders rode the thermals across the rolling green countryside, sharing the sky with numerous Red Kites, a stunning British bird of prey recently bred back from near extinction.
The day was over really all too quickly, it would have been nice to spend an evening or more catching up with everyone properly as they are a smart, funny and interesting bunch, and all characters. We will have to organize something longer next trip. Fortunately won't be too long until we can see some of them again.
Once back in Croydon we were hard pressed to decide on what to do for dinner... as much as the delights of local Croydon cuisine were inviting (actually there are some nice places in Croydon despite what some might say) we couldn't make our minds up re what we felt like. Eventually not being able to think of anything else I decided we should eat at Byrons at least once more while we could, and a quick check found one about 20 min away in a nearby suburb. It was getting fairly late, but we would make it.
After a considerable time winding through the residential streets of south London we got somewhere near where we were supposed to be, except that the interwebs pointed us to a very closed shopping mall. Confusion abounded between driver and navigator as we went into the deserted carparking building then back out, and spent a bit of time driving around the rather annoying one way system of central Bromley hunting for our dinner. Eventually we parked down the road and started walking around the pedestrian mall before turning back and trying the shopping complex... sure enough though all the lights were dimmed and shops closed the automatic doors opened, and in a very post-apocalyptic zombie movie moment we wandered through the dead complex and out the other side. There in a park area out the back we found several restaurants on a terrace including our Byrons. We got there just in time for the girl who appeared to be sweeping up to tell us they were closing in 30 minutes. More than a tad frustrated at this point we decided we didn't want to have to have to scoff our dinner and elected to look elsewhere.
There was still life in the place next door, the interestingly named and decorated 'Giraffe World Kitchen' which claimed to serve "international foods" and had a menu featuring a bit of all sorts from all round the planet. Apparently the founders travel the world and find things they like and add them to the menu. Or so the marketing tells us. I was somewhat skeptical, but we hoped at least we would find something to suit both of us. As it turned out, unsurprisingly, it was pretty terrible. And not just because the Eastern European, English language challenged waiter brought me the wrong meal, which I could not be bothered sending back, realizing that the right one was probably going to be awful anyway. I suspect few if any of the cooks had ever been to any of the places they were cooking food from, or possibly even had authentic versions of what they were cooking. Having worked so hard for our Byrons it was a highly unsatisfactory result. We decided to cut our losses and head home without dessert.
The next day was Monday, and we packed up our bits and dropped the rental car off and headed in to Mayfair, as already covered previously...
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