Journey to the Middle of the Earth

We went by Docklands Light Railway to Greenwich today. The DLR picks up where the tube leaves off, but you can connect from an underground station.  It's an overground service, and JY likes to sit in the front "where you can have a train driver's view." 

On the way to Greenwich, you go through the Canary Wharf area, which has changed unrecognizeably since I started coming to London in the 1980s.  It's all glass skyscrapers now and new building blocks.  It's where people go to make money:  All the office towers are owned by the big banks. 

We were principally headed to the Royal Observatory in Greenwich Park. 

At some point, during my trudge across the grass, it occurred to me that, of course, an observatory is going to be located at a removed point for better viewing.  I did not take pictures of Ye Olde Extremely Steep Hill as we were going up, but there certainly is one. 

In the courtyard is this:

...and it is also marked along the ground and with this -

At the top of one of the buildings, there is a time ball, which is dropped every day at 1:00 so that people can check Greenwich Mean Time, and it used to be used by the ships in the river. 

 Did you know that in the 18th century, you could pay to have a time runner set a pocket watch at the observatory and run it down into the city (Ye Olde Extremely Steep Hill!) and bring you time? People would set their clocks at home by it.  If this isn't ripe for a fantasy novel, I don't know what is. 

The major highlight of the exhibitions is the Harrison clocks, used to solve the longitude problem.  JY and I are big fans of Harrison because his is the story of the little guy doing amazing work for no (or extremely delayed) reward or recognition.  You are not allowed to take pictures of the clocks, but you can read about them here:
http://www.nmm.ac.uk/harrison
Another hero is Rupert Gould, who, in the 20th century, rescued and restored the clocks from where they had been, as one of the guides at the observatory was overheard saying, "just chucked down the basement." 

You can walk around the rooms where John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal, lived and worked.  He apparently suffered from frequent fevers, due to his late-night work.  You can see it looks extremely cold in the pictures, and in fact it is, up there on the hill.  At some point during his tenure, he married, and I hope his wife was good at stoking up fires. 

The reward for the walk up there is that there are some extremely good views down to the river.

 Greenwich park with the Royal Naval College and the Queen's House.

 The river with the Gherkin in the background. 

The O2 dome, where some of the 2012 Olympics events will take place.

We stayed up there until they turned on the laser, which follows the path of the Prime Meridian. 

As we were leaving, via Ye Olde Even Steeper Decline, a gentleman said to us, "Anyone got the correct time?"  I said, "You have been waiting all day to make that joke, haven't you?"  And he said, "Well, I thought, American tourists.  Have a bit of fun." 

It was so cold up there that I had lost feeling in most of my face, and so we had to go down to the town and have paella to recover.  Then we came back to Islington and took our crocheting and knitting to the Irish pub and unfroze some more.  The couple sitting at the next table were from eastern Europe, and the male half was fascinated by the sock needles: "There are so many!  And tiny!  When you see them on the tv, it is only two!"  I gave him a little lesson on sock construction, in the interests of international relations.