Trip to London Docklands and Greenwich

It was May 2004, we had already been to central London quite a few times so we decided to explore something a little offbeat. London docklands and Greenwich came as a natural choice. For those not aware about London docklands there is a little bit of history associated with it. The docks were formerly part of the Port of London, at one time the world's largest port. They have now been redeveloped principally for commercial and residential use. The name London Docklands was used for the first time in a government report on redevelopment plans in 1971 but has since become virtually universally adopted. Greenwich I guess needs no introduction with Greenwich mean time pretty well known all around the globe. Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) is a time system originally referring to mean solar time at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, which later became adopted as a global time standard.

For folks new to this route there are two interesting ways to get to Greenwich: by boat and and by tube. You can use the bus too but using the bus in London is not always a good idea due to frequent traffic congestion.   For getting there by tube from central London catch a train from Charing Cross, Waterloo (East), London Bridge, or, on weekdays, Cannon Street. Journey time from Charing Cross to Greenwich is about 15 minutes. Trains only run to or from Charing Cross and Waterloo (East) during morning and evening rush hours. At other times take a train to London Bridge and change to one starting from Cannon Street. About six trains per hour run between London Bridge and Greenwich at off-peak times. For getting there by boat there are frequent ferry services at Thames most of them originating at London eye. Boats arrive at Greenwich Pier, near the Cutty Sark and the Royal Naval College.

View of Docklands from Greenwich Royal Observatory

Coming back to our trip we chose to use the tube to get to Greenwich. We were a bit surprised to notice that this part of the London tube network called Docklands Light Railway is mostly above ground and that too elevated. We were able to get a nice view of the London dockyards and the waterways. Finally after reaching Greenwich we started towards the Greenwich Royal Observatory which is situated atop a hillock in Greenwich park overlooking river Thames  You can see that the O2 arena is visible at a distance in this photo at the left taken while walking to the Observatory.

Ancient clock at display

Finally we reached the royal observatory which was pretty historic. It had a decent collection of old clocks and watches and you can see some of them in the photos.

Another ancient clock

Clocks and watches apart our primary interest was to investigate and understand the prime meridian. Royal observatory is best known as the location of the prime meridian. A prime meridian is a meridian, i.e. a line of longitude, at which longitude is defined to be 0°. A prime meridian and its opposite in a 360°-system, the 180th meridian (at 180° longitude), form a great circle.
This great circle divides the sphere, e.g. the Earth, into two hemispheres. If one uses directions of East and West from a defined prime meridian, then they can be called Eastern Hemisphere and Western Hemisphere.

Standing on Prime Meridian

And you can see in this picture on the right that I am standing with one of my legs on the left of the prime meridian and the other leg on the right of it. Pretty interesting isn't it! I've inserted an earth-map above to help you visualize what I'm trying to explain.
On the way back we also managed to visit the Cutty Sark. The Cutty Sark is a British clipper ship. Built on the Clyde in 1869 for the Jock Willis shipping line, she was one of the last tea clippers to be built and one of the fastest, coming at the end of a long period of design development which halted as sailing ships gave way to steam propulsion.

The Glorious Cutty Sark

Cutty Sark is one of three ships in London on the Core Collection of the National Historic Ships Register (the nautical equivalent of a Grade 1 Listed Building) – alongside HMS Belfast and SS Robin. She is one of only three remaining original composite construction (wooden hull on an iron frame) clipper ships from the nineteenth century in part or whole, the others being the City of Adelaide, awaiting transportation to Australia for preservation, and the beached skeleton of Ambassador of 1869 near Punta Arenas, Chile.

There's one thing very amazing about London. Wherever you go, there is a piece of history waiting to be explored and experienced. Greenwich and Cutty Sark were no exceptions. It's incredible to see how much effort has been put to preserve all these little pieces of history.

That's all for now. Looking forward to writing about many such nostalgic trips within UK and Europe. Keep coming back.