A day out, with Tea & Cake!

How appropriate that a fun and cheery day out should start at my favourite of ALL the London Stations - St Pancras of course! Naturally any visit to this fantastic old Victorian masterpiece of architecture involves a wander across to pay ones respects to Mr Betjeman - did you know he was largely responsible for saving the station when there were plans to demolish it?  I'm glad he did - he certainly deserves his spot in the upstairs concourse, admiring the wonderful vaulted roof...

...so, Mr B greeted, it was time to head off to the other end of the station to procure a cuppa and find my train...

...there's mine in the middle - do you see? Final destination Sheffield, which was indeed where I was headed, to meet two cheery internet-friends - just for a day out, nothing specific. The plan had originally been for a couple of other chums to come across and meet us as well, sadly real life, dog sitting and poorly tooths got in the way there - another time, hopefully!

Sheffield itself is a lovely city, with a mix of fine old buildings, intelligently and attractively designed new ones, lots of water features, a lovely Winter Gardens, and some stunning parks. We went for a wander around one of them....

Just look at the variations in colour in that picture. That is one of the University buildings - the law school I believe I was told. If you're going to study law, it would be nice to do so in such a lovely building, wouldn't it!

Just round another corner, and this tree leapt out at us and demanded to be photographed. Naturally we obliged - how could you possibly ignore something so, well, RED?!

Here it is again from a little closer up - a blaze of colour above, and on the ground where the leaves are falling too. Is it any wonder I love Autumn? We're lucky to have some fantastic open spaces where I live too, so I can imagine that the people of Sheffield really appreciate these parks.

One final one before we move on to the other important parts of the day...

Tea! And CAKE! Not all mine I hasten to add - none of us could decide which cake to have so we bought a slice of each of those that we especially liked the look of , and split them three ways. The tea was mine though - we had one of those each! See that on the right - that was Chocolate Orange Crunch - or something like that - and it was utterly delicious.

There was also a lovely lunch in a cafe that we thought was going to be called one thing, but turned out to be called something different - very tasty food though - a ride in a Paternoster Lift which was rather fun - and that, coming from me, is quite something, as I am REALLY not a lift fan - lots and lots of walking, lots and lots of chat, and finally dinner in a pub, with some beer. (There are pictures of none of those things, you will notice. There IS one picture of the Paternoster lift, but that has me in it, so the chances of it appearing on here - or indeed anywhere else - are pretty slim!)

Final shot of the day is this rather wonderful  water feature just outside the station - marvellous, eh?!

Robyn