A walk around Greenwich

>>  Friday, July 17, 2015

 It was starting to push 30C in London  when I left Elvis at the O2 (I left the building not him) so I decided to catch the clipper to Greenwich rather than heading into the heat of the city centre.
 The Cutty Sark is there.  I'll go back another day to visit her though.
 The buildings around are the Old Royal Naval College, they were designed by Christopher Wren and are beautiful.



 They are now partly let to the University of Greenwich.

I sat in a quiet courtyard eating an ice-cream whilst listening to flute, piano and opera coming from the open windows of the practise rooms.

 There were plenty of shaded walk ways to sit and cool off in.

 The Painted Hall has been recently renovated and is amazing.



















I spent a long time with the information boards finding the kings, queens, virtues, countries, gods, so many things all there for a reason.  It's fascinating to stand and ponder what they all meant at the time.


 The grandeur of the buildings went on and on and I wandered on further heading away from the Thames.
 The Queen's House is a former Royal Residence.

 I wanted to go and see the paintings inside but decided to put it off for another day as it was a perfect day to take in ambience rather than detail.















The National Maritime museum is there, I visited it briefly for a loo stop


 I went past the buildings and up the hill towards the observatory.  There is a path to the right of the hill, so I wandered up in the shade of the trees.












 The Shepherd Gate clock is at the top of the path.  The date I visited was the day of the 2015 leap second.  I really wanted to ask them how this clock (or the main one in the observatory) would deal with it but it seemed bad form to bring up NPL and the true world centre of time these days. So I decided to let them carry on herding Japanese tourists who needed a photo on the Meridian.

This red ball rises just before 13:00 (BST) noon (GMT) and drops on the dot so boats could accurately set their time.

It's been doing it since 1833.















There are great views from up high too.

This was my first visit to Greenwich.  It was nice to get a feel for the area and I'll now go back to visit different places one by one.  Starting with the Observatory itself I think.


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