Greenwich

Low on funds but high on life, we headed south east of London to the lovely little suburb called and World Heritage Site - Greenwich.

Going completely against the grain of our other travels, we had done very little research on Greenwich preferring to show up and see what happened. We arrived at the Information Centre and were surprised at how hard out it was, we played around with a few exhibits like the Knights armour and then bought a map to help us on our journey.

Greenwich is best known for its maritime history and as giving its name to the Greenwich Meridian (0° longitude) and Greenwich Mean Time (GMT). The town became the site of a Royal palace, and was the birthplace of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I. The palace fell into disrepair during the English Civil War and was rebuilt as the Royal Naval Hospital for Sailors by Sir Christopher Wren under the orders of William and Mary.

These buildings became the Royal Naval College in 1873, and they remained an establishment for military education until 1998 when they passed into the hands of the Trinity College of Music.

Admiral H.S Bennie...the silver fox aka Granda would of been proud!

We wandered around the Royal Naval College and we were both really impressed with the architecture, especially in the Painted Hall which was quite different from any of the Palaces and Churches that we had seen.

We were also impressed to find out that Pirates of the Caribbean 4 is being filmed there next weekend! So we took a few photos of the set they were building around the Naval College and we are going to see if we can spot them in the movie - coming soon to a cinema near you...

Hamish was very excited about all the references to Lord Nelson, Collingwood and Trafalgar and it meant that we ended up taking a lot of photos….

After the Royal Naval College, we headed into the little town in search of some lunch. We found the markets and had a wander round, we had issues finding a place for lunch but eventually found a pub The Horse and Castles where we had a Sunday roast and people watched. It was very English and ok.

Then we headed up a hill (the first time we had done that in London) to the Royal Observatory. There were so many people up there, quite amazing as what they were all trying to see was just a line. We got swept up in the excitement as well though and queued up to get the cheesy shots. It took some explaining from Hamish but Louise finally understood what the Meriden line actually is.

Lous little toes are on the line - 0°0' 0''

Apparently back in the day, the watches they made for people used to run out of sync by about as 30 minutes everyday, so the Royal Observatory used to charge people to get their watches put on the right time, a nice little money earner.


We scooted through the rest of the Royal Observatory and found the Weller Astronomy Exhibition - Dad I didn’t know we had Astronomers as ancestors???!!!

We also found the statue of Wolfe, now this may be crazy but is this where the line “What’s the time Mr. Wolfe?” comes from??? We think so.

We finished our day with a stroll to the DLR station back home to Fulham. We felt the Greenwich was a nice little town full of surprises and will go back next summer.

Highlight #1: The Royal Naval College - a set of really cool buildings, and it was nice to be reminded of the sea even though we weren’t on the coast!  
Highlight #2: The monument to New Zealand naval officers, nice one.  
Lowlight: The famous ship the Cutty Sark (which Granda may have sailed on) being closed for renovations. 
Interesting fact: The GMT convention was internationally recognised in 1884, and Wellington is 174 degrees west of the Prime Meriden line.