Day 40
Greenwich - Green Park - Gunnersbury
Finally! Some sunshine to relieve the monotonous grey of the last few weeks.
And another - hopefully - auspicious day as I pass another alphabetical milestone and complete the Gs.
And what a lovely place to kick off the day. Greenwich really is a very pleasant place to spend a couple of hours. It's got a park, the river, historical landmarks, and a vibrant town centre - what more could you possibly ask for?
Well, a sign telling you where the hell you are might be a good place to start...
As usual, the DLR station at Greenwich is singularly lacking in any decent signage, and it takes me a good five minutes of wandering back and forth between the two exits to find any mention of the word 'Greenwich'.
In doing so, I encounter two rather unusual sights - one of which is just a little quirky, while the other is downright odd.
The first is just some funky decoration for the building that stands next to one of the station exits:
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| Greenwich building décor |
I have no idea what the building contains, nor why multi-coloured bicycles should have been hung from it in this fashion - unless it's a nod to Greenwich's maritime history. Though I rather think that was a different Raleigh... Actually, I suspect it's just something achingly trendy to do with media or design.
The second odd thing is the crowd of people stood at the entrance to the station where I finally find a sign I can take a photo of:
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| Greenwich |
They have all come from one of the buildings next to the station, from which the sounds of a fire alarm can be heard. It appears to be a fire drill. So far so normal. And at first glance you may not notice anything particularly unusual in the picture, but look more closely and you might just be able to make out, in the centre, a young woman who seems not only to be wearing pink pyjamas, but also carrying a large teddy-bear.
Now this is most definitely not the usual attire for the office.
Actually, when I pass back through the crowd to get to the other entrance to the station, I begin to doubt that it is an office these people have come from, as there are several more in the crowd (all women for some reason) dressed in bed-wear. Maybe it's a hospital - though the others don't look particularly like doctors - or, perhaps more likely, a college. This does have all the hallmarks of a student rag week event.
In the absence of any further explanation, and on the assumption I'm not still in bed myself and this is all some weird dream, I head into Greenwich centre.
Cutty Sark station - which I've already visited - is actually the most central of Greenwich's two DLR stations, and it's quite a walk from the one I've come to today into the town centre. Having seen that famous vessel when I was last here, I head instead towards Greenwich Park, where the other main landmarks can be found.
The park starts off as a rather pleasant, slightly sloped area of trees and grass, but then becomes a, frankly, ridiculously steep climb up a hill, atop which sits the park's main attraction - The Royal Observatory.
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| Greenwich Park - and Royal Observatory |
The Observatory was built in 1676, having been commissioned by Charles II - who created the position of Astronomer Royal with the instruction that the Astronomer should "apply himself with the most exact care and diligence to the rectifying of the tables of the motions of the heavens, and the places of the fixed stars, so as to find out the so much desired longitude of places for the perfecting of the art of navigation." Ultimately this would lead to the adoption of the Greenwich Meridian by international navigators, and Greenwich Mean Time as the 'zero hour' from which all world time is calculated.
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| Shepherd Gate Clock - showing Greenwich Mean Time. Below are standard units of measurement |
The relationship between Time and navigation is a relatively complex one, but in simple terms, if you know the exact time at a fixed point on Earth, and the exact time where you are at some other point on Earth, the difference between them will enable you to calculate your location (at least as far as longitude goes - latitude is a different matter.)
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| The Greenwich Meridian |
Eventually however, at a conference as late as 1884, the Greenwich Meridian was adopted by the world as the point where East meets West.
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| Sorry love - you're still in the same hemisphere... |
Well... actually, not quite.
That would have been true up until the late 20th Century, but with the advent of satellite GPS and other technical jiggery-pokery far too complicated to understand without a degree in astrophysics, it became clear that the Earth wasn't, so to speak, playing ball.
Movements in tectonic plates and other factors mean that the line designated 0° 00′ 00.00″ W is constantly changing, but in any case is actually about 100 metres to the east of the steel strip everybody is so delightedly straddling.
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| One of many sundials. Yes it is a sundial -the tips of the tails don't quite meet, so the sunlight is focused to a point on the metal plate beneath. |
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| Time Ball - sailors on the river set their chronometers at 1pm the moment the ball began to drop (not when it hit the bottom). |
Having latched onto the importance of accurately determining Time, the folk at the observatory seem to have become rather obsessed by it. There are sundials everywhere - in all shapes and sizes - and on the roof of the observatory is a 'time ball', which signalled the exact time of 1pm (why 1pm rather than noon, I have no idea) at the moment it dropped.
Obviously as well as time, the observatory was used to study the movement of the stars and planets, and the second person to hold the title Astronomer Royal was a certain Edmond Halley - discoverer of the comet which now bears his name.
His original tombstone (which was moved when the church where he was buried was demolished and rebuilt) is now built into one of the walls of the observatory.
A planetarium, open to the public, is housed beneath a huge bronze-clad structure, which is a truncated cone in shape.
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| Cosmic man... |
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| Planetarium - beneath the cone. |
This shape, as is explained by the sign next to it, is designed to be precisely aligned with various celestial and terrestrial points of reference - which unfortunately somehow still fails to prevent it looking like the chimney from a steam-ship.
What is far more interesting is the view from the observatory out across the park, and towards the river. You really can see for miles from here.
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| Old meets New |
In the background are various modern landmarks, and in the foreground is the Queen's House (that's Queen Anne, wife of James I) and the National Maritime Museum. The 17th and the 21st Centuries standing one in front of the other. It's almost like one of those photo-shopped images that occasionally do the rounds on Facebook - where a modern-day photo is superimposed onto an old black and white shot of the same location.
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| The Queen's House |
I wander back down the hill and stroll along the façade of the Queen's House, and along its colonnades. These were added n 1807 to link the main house with additional wings which were built to house the pupils of what by that time had become a school for the sons of seamen.
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| When life gives you columns - make colonnades... |
I continue to the west of the Queen's House, past the Maritime Museum. I don't have time to go in as I need to be moving on, but I do like the humorous sculpture outside the entrance.
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| Ship in a bottle |
And that's it for Greenwich - at least for me. I'd happily come back and spend the whole day here, and I know there's more to discover. But it's high time I was back on the tracks and heading to my next destination - Green Park.
***
The station at Green Park, like most of the others in Central London, has various exits, leading to different locations at street level. But I think it might be unique in having an exit leading directly into a park - the park of course from which it gets its name.
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| Green Park |
The park stretches from Piccadilly along its northern border, down to Buckingham Palace and the Mall (my second Queen's House of the day!) - and like the other main parks in London, is full of tourists, joggers, and lunching office workers.
I head west first of all, to the first of the park's monuments. This is dedicated to the men of RAF Bomber Command and aircrews from other nations who died in WWII.
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| Bomber Command Memorial |
The second memorial, also dedicated to those who died in battle, is the Canada Memorial.
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| Canada Memorial |
This commemorates Canadian forces killed in both the first and second world wars and is designed to have water flowing over it to give the impression that the Maple leaves embedded in the red granite are actually floating.
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| No water flowing today - but you get the idea. |
The taps don't seem to be turned on today however, which is a shame as I think the effect would be quite stunning.
Out of the park at the nearby Canada Gate and onto Constitution Hill, and there's no doubting that we're at one of the leading tourist attractions in the capital.
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| No - she's not in. |
Buckingham Palace is a constant throng of people taking photos through the railings, but from this distance it actually looks quite serene.
The Union Flag flying on the roof, while no doubt exciting the tourists, is no indication of the presence of the monarch - quite the opposite in fact. Since the death of Diana in 1997, when the tabloid-fuelled masses were supposedly 'disgusted' that there was no flag flying at half mast (there was no flag at all - the Royal Standard, the only flag flown at the palace up till then, and which indicated that the Queen was in residence, was at the time flying over Balmoral, where she was in residence) the protocol has changed and the Queen's Flag Sergeant now flies a Union Flag whenever the Queen is not in residence, and the Royal Standard when she is.
If a member of the royal family or other dignitary dies, the Union Flag is then flown at half mast (assuming that is, that the Queen isn't in - it isn't clear whether it's only the Union Flag that is allowed to be at half mast, so I don't know what would happen if someone important died while Her Majesty was at home. Possibly she always makes sure she's elsewhere if she knows someone's about to hop the twig...?)
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| Victoria Memorial |
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| Winged Victory |
In front of the palace is the Victoria Memorial, with its gilded 'Winged Victory' standing over the figure of Victoria herself. (Victoria was the Roman goddess of Victory - and it's a good job they went with the Roman version, as the Greek one was the goddess Nike, so we might have ended up with a giant running shoe in front of the palace.)
Leading away from the Palace, toward Trafalgar Square, is the wide thoroughfare known as The Mall.
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| The Mall |
This name (as well as that of Pall Mall which runs parallel to it) comes from the game called Pall-Mall (an early form of Croquet) played on the open field that once stood here. The road was designed as a ceremonial route similar to those in other major cities (like the Champs Elysée in Paris) and is coloured red so as to represent a huge Red Carpet leading to the palace. Surprisingly, this was only introduced in the 1950s - although the road has of course been here for much longer.
North of Green Park is Piccadilly - and just a little way along it is possibly the most famous hotel in London.
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| The Ritz |
The Ritz, named after the man who built it - César Ritz, a Swiss hotelier who also managed the Savoy Hotel - was opened in 1906 and has attracted the rich and famous ever since. You can get a suite for a mere £1860 a night, or if you can't quite stretch to that, you could just go for Afternoon Tea and pay 50 quid or so for a cuppa and a sarnie.
Further north still, in the area known as Mayfair, is Berkeley Square, and here again the watchword is very much 'Wealth'. It's no accident that Mayfair is the most expensive property on the Monopoly board. There's both a Bentley and a Rolls Royce showroom in the square, and the clothes on the people bustling along are all very much Designer labelled.
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| Berkeley Square |
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| Number 50, Berkeley Square. Spooky, eh? |
There's no sign of any nightingale singing today, sadly, although there are plenty of people '...perfectly willing to swear...' - normally very loudly into their mobile phones to their (presumably hard of hearing) stock-broker chums. I do a very quick circuit of the square, and its central garden, and end up outside number 50. This is reputedly the 'most haunted house in London' (which is a bit like saying The Moon is the celestial body with the highest cheese content) but is simply a shop selling rare books (which, presumably, are all ghost-written...)
Having nearly been run over by one too many Rolex-wearing Mercedes drivers, clearly far too important to concern themselves with such trivial things as traffic lights, I leave the delights of Mayfair and head to the final station on the list of 'G's - Gunnersbury.
***
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| Gunnersbury |
A is wherever you happen to be coming from, while B, in this case, is probably the Chiswick Park business centre across the road - a fairly new development on the site of a former bus depot - or it might be the British Standards Institution (BSI) building in whose shadow the station sits (or possibly cowers - it's a very big building).
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| Chiswick Tower - The BSI building |
The BSI is responsible for the production of documented 'Standards' (technical specifications or testing data) which enable products to be manufactured consistently - and thus be used successfully - around the world.
The well-known 'kitemark' in particular is used to denote products which have passed the BSI's safety tests.
Like all business parks, industrial estates, commercial centres - call them what you will - the focus is clearly on the working environment, rather than what goes on around it. This stretch of Chiswick High Road has very little to attract the casual visitor, and even the people working here have only a smattering of shops and a pub to entertain them in whatever breaks they have.
I don't linger very long on this road therefore, and instead head south towards the M4, whose constant drone of traffic fills the air.
I'm not heading for the motorway itself, but for something that every motorist (including me) has probably caught a glimpse of as they speed by, and been mildly surprised by.
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| Onion Dome |
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| Russian Orthodox Church |
From the M4 all you see is the bright blue onion dome that sits on its tower - but below is the imposingly named, but otherwise fairly modest, Cathedral of the Dormition of the Most Holy Mother of God and Holy Royal Martyrs - a Russian Orthodox church, which sits by the railway line heading into Gunnersbury Station.
It is a relatively new building - dating from 1999 - but the Russian Orthodox church has had a presence in London since the early 18th Century and in particular of course, following the revolution of 1917.
From the street you're actually looking at the back of the building, which is fairly plain, but with a little ingenuity (which involves heading back to the main road, across the railway bridge, then down the opposite side of the railway line) I manage to get a view of the front - with its array of bells and a clear view of the dome.
It's an impressive sight with which to end today's journey, and I head back to the station - which is of course the last of the 'G's... yippee! - feeling satisfied with a good day's travelling.
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