Bistrot d’Henri

Early in our UK trip this year, we got on the train and headed out to far Eastern outskirts of London, to a very odd destination: the Crossness Pumping Station. Now decommissioned, for almost 100 years, the Crossness was a gigantic, steam-powered… sewage pump. It’s more interesting than it sounds, since it’s primarily an example (and possibly one of the best examples) of Victorian-era engineering in all of it’s overly-adorned awesomeness. After a rather long morning of touring gigantic flywheels, steam cylinders, giant brick galleries, and entire more elaborately painted cast iron than anyone thought possible, we were more than ready for some lunch. Taking the train back towards London, it was easiest for us to stop in Greenwich, and since we spent the morning experiencing old-school English engineering, this was a good opportunity to have a good, old-school English lunch of pie and mash, stopping off at Goddard’s at Greenwich.