Advertisement
Published: March 1st 2021
Edit Blog Post
http://www.heygo.com 28th February - A ride on a London No. 11 Bus & Greenwich Meantime.
The very first bus route opened on 4 July 1829. The horse-drawn service carried paying passengers between the Yorkshire Stingo pub in Paddington and the Bank of England in the City. The full trip cost one shilling, and took about 40 minutes.
Ever wondered why the buses we see today are painted red?
London General Omnibus Company (or L.G.O.C.) owned most of the buses and in 1907 painted its entire fleet red to stand out from competitors. Since 1933, the colour was adopted by London Transport and it has remained ever since.
There are 8,600 buses in the whole fleet, operating on 700 routes, serving 19,000 bus stops.
Yesterday I hadn’t planned to do a tour in the morning but just before lunch I hopped on the No. 11 with Charley for a virtual ride which lasted about 45 minutes from Liverpool Street to Victoria.
Charley does several of these virtual tours and you never know what bus you are going to be taking until you arrive at the bus stop.
It was a grey day & a Sunday, not many people about so we had the advantage of a front seat on the top deck. So sit back and enjoy the ride.
After lunch I joined another virtual tour, this time to Greenwich to enjoy hearing about GMT with Nathalie.
Under the Tudors Greenwich Park was the pre-eminent Royal palace, having been rebuilt in the early C16 by Henry VII and later by Henry VIII, who was born there.
James I gave Greenwich to his Queen, Anne of Denmark, in 1613 and in 1616.
The 1660s saw the character of the park transformed from a medieval hunting park into a formal landscape with a grand garden and avenues. Charles II completed Queen's House and commissioned Sir William Boreman to supervise improvements to the park.
The design reflected the French influence to which Charles II was exposed while in exile.
When Charles II lost interest in Greenwich and concentrated his attentions on Hampton Court, he appointed Britain's first Astronomer Royal and engaged Sir Christopher Wren to design an observatory. After this period of activity little royal interest was taken
in the park but it became increasingly popular with the public and pensioners from the adjoining naval hospital.
The first public time signal in the country came from the Observatory in 1833 with the first dropping of the Time Ball, at 12:55 pm GMT the ball was hoisted halfway up its pole before being dropped from the top at 13:00 precisely. GMT was officially adopted as ‘railway time’ in 1847 and the Master Clock was installed at Greenwich in 1852, from then on its tick was the pulse of British time - it was sent by telegraph to cities around the UK and from 1866 sent by the new transatlantic submarine cable to Harvard University in the US, who began to run their own industry by British time.
1884 was the year GMT’s position was cemented in history, when the International Meridian Conference was held in Washington D.C with 41 delegates from 25 nations to agree on the earth’s prime meridian “to be employed as a common zero of longitude and a standard of time reckoning throughout the world.”
Greenwich park was busy on Sunday, despite our current lockdown restrictions, it
was rather concerning seeing so many people gathering together when only exercise with one other person is the current guidance.
Our guide mentioned that on her previous tour Police had been moving people on, they had allowed her to continue filming as she was alone and was considered as working.
We enjoyed spectacular views across the River Thames to the City of London (to the north-west), Canary Wharf (to the north-north-west), and the Millennium (O2) Dome (to the north).
Nelson’s Ship in a Bottle was commissioned by the Greater London Authority for the Fourth Plinth project and was unveiled in Trafalgar Square in May 2010. It now has a permanent home at National Maritime Museum thanks to a fundraising campaign by the Art Fund. You can see it outside the Sammy Ofer Wing for free. Unfortunately as all museums are still closed we could only view it from behind the hedge.
We then moved towards the river and the iconic Curry Sark. I remember visiting here before the tragic fire in 2007.
Built in 1869, the Cutty Sark started life as a tea clipper, carrying tea from China to
Britain. Tea was a very valuable commodity at the time, and each year the clippers would race against one another in an attempt to be the first to bring the new season’s crop to London (the first to arrive could command the highest prices). Although Cutty Sark never won the tea race it did gain a reputation for being one of the fastest ships on the seas. In 1871 it achieved the world record for sailing between England and China in the shortest time, and later it broke the record for the voyage to Australia.
Cutty Sark’s career as a tea clipper came to an end with the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869. Sailing ships could not use the canal, but it enabled steam ships to make the journey from China in a much shorter time. So the Cutty Sark was put into service bringing wool from Australia. Later it carried general cargoes, including coal.
As part of the National Historical Fleet it has been on display to the public since 1954. But that was not the end of its adventures, the ship caught fire in 2007 and did not reopen until
2012 with modern technology allowing for a great experience on this iconic vessel.
I’m travelling all around the world of my virtual trips but there is always something to learn travelling here in London.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.094s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 14; qc: 26; dbt: 0.0526s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb