May 16-17, 2013
Over the last few gray, drizzly days Don has been able to sneak in some bike rides while I have been doing my exercise routine.
One day he went along the canal and up to the Olympic venue. He was quite surprised at the number of longboats, long, skinny houseboats, moored along the canal. He said he saw at least 100.
Another day he went to the Transportation Museum where he saw some really cool, historical posters advertising the public transportation system. He has been listening to a Detective Monk story which is set right in the area where we live and is about the dangerous drilling that was done to install the Tube system. It is a very interesting story, especially when it references streets we walk on every day. When we ride the tube now we think of what it was like to work underground building the tunnels for the system. There are lots of underground rivers and springs, which made the walls of the tunnels very treacherous. Many were killed when the walls of the tunnels caved in.
After Don returned from his ride on Friday we decided to take the DLR to Greenwich, where the Cutty Sark is located and also the famous Greenwich Mean Time is calculated. Greenwich turned out to be an interesting surprise.
The train let us out right at the Cutty Sark, which is a beautiful boat--the last tea clipper to sail from the Far East. The boat was the fastest clipper in the fleet, and always was one of the first to bring the new tea harvest to England's tea drinkers, but was eventually replaced by steamships once the Suez Canal was opened.
From the Cutty Sark we strolled over to the Old Royal Naval College. This is a huge campus with a long history. Early history shows that there was once a Roman encampment on this land which was later taken over by Edgar the Great, whose daughter granted the land to the Abbey of St. Peter. Next came the Viking invasions and a peasant's revolt, which gave Henry V the opportunity to reclaim the land. The land passed through the hands of a bunch of Dukes and Princesses. Henry VIII was born here too, as was his daughter, Elizabeth I. But enough history. In 1675 the royal Observatory was established here and then the Royal Hospital for Seamen.
Christophe Wren got into the architectural act here, building two huge domes.
During the time the hospital was here the artist, James Thornhill, painted a huge, amazing mural on the ceiling of the huge hall. (This hall would be a wonderful place for a wedding reception, and the pretty chapel on the grounds would be a nice place to get married. If you have the bucks, or pounds.) The painting is very detailed and full of allegorical references and cherubs, ala Michelangelo.
The lovely chapel on the grounds is intricately carved and painted gold and baby blue. Very light and airy and very pretty.
From the campus we strolled up the hill to the Royal Observatory where we enjoyed the nice view over the river, and saw the prime meridian where you can stand with one foot in the Eastern Hemisphere and the other in the Western Hemisphere.
We went into the building to see the huge telescope, the UK's largest refracting telescope, and the museum full of sextants, clocks and the history of maritime navigation. Time was very important to seamen who were navigating the high seas with only the stars for landmarks.
Back down the hill to the Maritime Museum where we spent another hour learning all about the history of British seafaring over the centuries. They had a great Learning Center for kids with a big map of the world displayed on the floor. Kids could get a little boat to scoot around on the map and as they moved to certain parts of the world a little recording with an interesting factoid would play in their boat.
So, there was much more to see in Greenwich than we thought and it was a very pleasant and informative visit.
No comments:
Post a Comment