London: Greenwich; Saturday, 26 August, 2023

I had a relatively early start and after breakfast I headed out of the hotel and over to the nearby bus stop to pick up the bus the couple of stops to Greenwich Park. The bus was deserved as the entrance I was heading to was right up on Blackheath up a really steep hill climbing out of Greenwich, which I didn’t fancy tackling this morning.

I spent quite a bit of time just wandering around the park, before heading down to the statue of General James Wolfe – the main reason was not to see the statue, but to take in the view from this ridge down onto the Old Royal Naval College down in Greenwich, along with views across the City of London, the Docklands, North Greenwich and beyond.

This part of the park is also the location of the Royal Observatory – the original home of the Astronomer Royal and the centre of time, zero degree longitude, the Prime Meridian, passing through the observatory grounds cutting the planet into the Western and Eastern hemispheres, with the ability to stand in both at once. It’s also the basis of the worlds time zones with UTC 0 corresponding with Greenwich Mean Time. The museum in the observatory covers all of these topics from the original astronomical observations of the site through to it’s importance in calculating time and with that longitude.

I spent quite some time looking round the different exhibitions, meaning that I was still at the observatory in time to watch the Time Ball rise on the mast on the tower facing the Thames at 12:55 and then drop on the stroke of 1pm – a signal that has been providing time to the boats down on the Thames for centuries.

From the Observatory I walked the short distance back through the park to the Rangers House. This stately home had originally been the home of the Rangers of Greenwich Park, but over time had fallen out of use and by the end of the 20th century was passed over to the care of English Heritage, however the building had lost all of it’s fittings and art works over the years so English Heritage had a palace with nothing to show inside. At the same time the collection of Gold and Diamond magnate Julius Wernher had just been saved for the nation, but had no home to display it in – so it turned out to be good timing and the collection is now shown off in the house, a house it has no connection to at all.

I spent a decent amount of time looking around the collection, and then quite a bit longer still as a massive thunder storm passed overhead and I took shelter in the house to avoid getting absolutely soaked. With the thunderstorm eventually passed overhead I headed down from the park into the centre of town and grabbed a late lunch, before wandering over to my final museum of the day – the National Maritime Museum.

I had a good look around the museum, spending most of the rest of the afternoon taking in the exhibits, to the point that they were starting to close down by the time I’d finished looking round.

As I left the museum it was pretty obvious that another pretty hefty belt of rain was about to pass through – helped by the thunder and lightning already rumbling around. I decided that I was unlikely to make it all the way back to the hotel without getting wet, so decided to cheat and catch the DLR the one stop from Cutty Sark to Greenwich in the hope to either keep ahead of the rain, or at the very least keep out of it under cover, and that plan worked almost perfectly – getting back to Greenwich station just as the first fat spots of rain started hitting the platform, unfortunately my assumption that the platform canopy stretched from the DLR platform all the way back to the station building was proved to be wrong and as I was walking the short distance through the gap in canopy the skies absolutely opened, thankfully I was able to dive into a small shelter so kept dry, but had to wait there for about 10 minutes as the rain totally hammered it down.

I took advantage of a short slow down in the rain to make a dash for the station building and then across to the hotel, only getting slightly wet in the process, and sat out the following 30 minutes of intense rainfall in my hotel room.

With the rain finally clearing through to a crisp but bright evening I headed back out of the hotel and wandered down to the riverside to have a wander around Greenwich at dusk – which is a much less busy place than Greenwich during the main part of the day. I don’t think I’ve ever seen the Cutty Sark with nobody beside it before. I headed down to the riverside to take in the sunset and then wandered back into the town centre to grab dinner before heading back to my hotel.