Vintage Afternoon Tea.....on a train

This weekend was a wet, gloomy one for the UK but it also happened to be a weekend that we'd booked to go away for a night.  I'd been given a free night's stay at any of the Handpicked Hotels chain and we chose Buxted Park Hotel in East Sussex.  Here are a couple of photos of how it looks in the sunshine (we saw it in rain but still loved it!)  In the photo below it shows our room on the top right corner.  We were so lucky with the room as it looked out over the grounds and the gorgeous stone church.

There were great things to do on the way there - Hever castle where Anne Boleyn grew up and The Bluebell Railway which is entirely run by volunteers.  Continuing Mr P's birthday week, I had booked us tickets on the train for afternoon tea.  It really was like stepping back in time when we got on to the platform, advertisements and the conductors' uniforms all from the era.  Even the bathrooms were made to take you back to a time gone by. 

The age of steam travel is often now pictured as a lost age of romance. Brief encounters between proper people on smoky platforms; locomotives alive with power, burbling and breathing before pulling away from a platfom in a kind of long explosion. Unlike modern locomotives the power and vitality of a steam engine is so apparent, pouring out at the funnel, around the wheels, at every seam and joint. Watching a steam engine pull away from a platform it is easy to see how such vibrant machines could have been thought of in human terms. So why do steam engines give rise to these feelings? What makes them so different to nice quiet, clean electric locomotives?

We live in an age of ever increasing efficiency; and it is hard to be unhappy about that. And yet, just for a moment, to step out of such a world is a relief. That is the feeling I had at Sheffield Park station. We walked into a ticket office warmed by a coal fire. On the platform there was a poignant stack of period luggage, waiting for a journey it would never take. Meanwhile trains were plying back and forth on a nine mile stretch of track from Sheffield Park to Kingscote in West Sussex, which for all practical purposes is a journey from nowhere to nowhere. With the Bluebell Railway the journey is the only thing that matters and especially if you are nibbling away on yummy sandwiches and tea!

The Bluebell Railway opened in 1960 while steam trains still worked on British railways. The idea was to preserve part of the Lewes to East Grinstead line, using trains and rolling stock from the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway.

In the summer there is an amazing vintage bus that takes you between the stations:

...and finally, the afternoon tea, I've never drunk so much!!  I really want to recreate the scones (which you can't see, hidden by the mini meringue.)  They were tiny little things with a dollop of strawberry compote, cream and strawberry slices on top.)  We also had lemon shortbread, custard tarts, fruit cake and mini eclairs......

 It would be lovely to take our train to nowhere in the summer when the bluebells that give the train its name are out and lining the track,  We'd be happy just taking the journey without the tea as it's a really wonderful feeling taking a trip on a steam train.  Also, the warmer weather will allow a more glamorous outfit ;-)  This time it was so cold, all you could see of my dress was the hem over my thick black tights and under my thick grey coat!