England, Day 9 (Atypical London)

Before we left on our trip to England I promised everyone in the family that we would visit at least one thing they absolutely wanted to see. We completed that for the younger kid at Tankfest. Two more bucket list destinations happened during our first full day in London. We’re not a normal family so we had to spin some Twelve Mile Circle weirdness into the situation.

Prime Meridian

Long time 12MC readers probably already guessed my highest priority. Yes, of course, I had to straddle the Prime Meridian at the Royal Observatory in Greenwich (map). Was there ever any doubt?

Latitude is easy, it’s just lines running parallel to the equator. However, longitude is completely arbitrary. Many countries defined their own Prime Meridian up through the 19th Century. Of course, even the United States had one (and I had an unnatural fixation on it for awhile). Eventually a bunch of countries gathered in 1884 and they coalesced around the Royal Observatory, specifically a line through its Airy Transit Circle. It was already becoming a de facto standard by then anyway although a handful of countries had trouble letting go of their own for awhile (*cough* France *cough*).

So there I stood, briefly split by the earth’s Eastern and Western Hemispheres. Or did I? The line of tourists patiently waiting for the same opportunity certainly implied it.

Let’s Make Sure

Unfortunately, I’m a completest so that wasn’t good enough for me. I had to move 102 metres to the east and stand atop the International Reference Meridian. That’s the one Global Positioning Satellites use. It had no marker, nobody took selfies, and people didn’t line up for it. The crowd didn’t care. I simply walked over to the invisible line, opened my phone’s compass app, and took a screen print.

There’s a little bit of controversy about those two Prime Meridians, by the way. It’s somewhat complicated and it involves the effects of gravity and such. Some say the International Reference Meridian is the “real” meridian and it continues to shift about 2.5 centimetres to the east every year. Others say, no, the two serve different purposes and they are both correct.

Well, all I knew, was that I needed to straddle both because I didn’t want to have to return to Greenwich someday because I guessed wrong.

Royal Observatory

Then, of course, we needed to tour the actual observatory. Once again we got tickets ahead of time and positioned ourselves for the earliest possible admission. I hate crowds.

The observatory opened in 1675, commissioned by King Charles II. He chose a spot removed from London and atop a hill, a place perfect for viewing the heavens. He also established the position of Astronomer Royal and appointed John Flamsteed to fill it. Once appointed, most people keep the job for decades and we’re only up to the fifteenth Astronomer Royal today. This included Edmond Halley, better know for predicting what we now know of as Halley’s Comet.

Observatory Museum

The Royal Observatory is way too close to the rest of modern London’s light pollution today. So now it’s a museum. There are plenty telescopes, clocks and various other astronomical instruments on display and we saw them all. I cared more for the meridian of course but the other attractions were a nice bonus.

London Views

Naturally it made sense to place an observatory on a hilltop, and the extra elevation created some nice views. It was particularly spectacular at Greenwich. That’s a good reward for hiking uphill from the nearest Tube station.

The Queen’s House appears in the foreground. It dates to the 16th Century although queens haven’t used it for a long. time. Now it’s an art gallery. A sliver of the River Thames peeks through immediately behind that and the towers Canary Wharf rise in the background. Nearly all of those skyscrapers are new, and date to the 21st Century. This part of the skyline would have looked remarkably different even a quarter century ago.

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National Maritime Museum

There were other things to do in Greenwich and we had plenty of extra time. We thought about touring the Cutty Sark but we’d already toured an historic ship a few days earlier in Bristol. So we popped into the National Maritime Museum instead (map). That took up the rest of the morning and then we found lunch nearby.

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Taxi

London taxi drivers are famous for being able to navigate the city from memory. They have to pass a series of increasingly difficult tests to earn a license, a multi-year process called “The Knowledge“. It involves the memorization of 320 standard routes with about 25,000 streets and something like 100,000 distinct places. But at the end, drivers have a steady job and passengers know they will get to the right place in the most efficient manner.

We took our first and only London taxi ride as we departed Greenwich. They are not cheap. However, in this case we would need to take multiple trains and/or buses instead. All things being equal I’ll choose public transportation but here it made logical sense to hail a cab and save a tremendous amount of time. Plus I really wanted the experience a London cab.

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Dinosaurs

We were heading to the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs, first put on display in 1854 (map). This was our older kid’s wish list request. But as it turned out, our taxi driver had never heard of the dinosaurs. I felt pretty smug knowing that my kid stumped someone with The Knowledge. To be fair, I later looked at a map and saw that our destination was about a mile beyond the six-mile radius of Charing Cross, the defining area of The Knowledge. Our driver could certainly find Crystal Palace Park without any difficulty and it all worked out fine.

The Crystal Palace was a massive iron and plate glass building constructed for the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park. They moved it to Sydenham Hill when the exhibition ended, built Crystal Palace Park around it, and sadly the structure burned to the ground in 1936.

However, soon after the move to Sydenham Hill, they thought it would be great to add a bunch of “dinosaur” replicas for some inexplicable reason. The sculptures represented the most scientifically accurate depiction of these creatures based on the nascent field of paleontology during the mid 19th Century. And wow, are they wildly out of date now. That’s part of the appeal; maybe the majority of the appeal.

There’s no more Crystal Palace anymore but the park remains as does a football team, and of course the dinosaurs. I’m not sure the Crystal Palace Dinosaurs would land on most international visitor itineraries but that’s how we do things on Twelve Mile Circle. I hope this inspires someone else to visit and give the dinosaurs some love.

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Articles in the England Series

1. Do Over
2. Jurassic Coast
3. Dorchester
4. Bristol
5. Isle of Purbeck
6. Bournemouth
7. Tankfest
8. Onward to London
9. Atypical London
10. More Typical London

See Also: The Complete Photo Album on Flickr