The Back-story to Del Boy's Millions

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Following on from the previous photography workshops to Rannoch Moor and to Dartmoor (see Road Surfing My Way to Scotland and Old School Navigation Saved The Day respectively), I'm indulging in more photography, this time to Harris and Lewis in Scotland. I had booked my flights well in advance and everything seemed to be sorted nicely. Heathrow to Glasgow, Glasgow to Stornoway and then returning the same route in reverse. Perfect.

Then all the planned cancellations started (to relieve all the capacity issues at Heathrow) and, understandably, the domestic flights were the first to go. At least it happened well in advance so it gave plenty of time to find an alternative. That alternative was going out via Edinburgh. Sigh of relief, relaxed and everything is all still sorted again. But then, a few weeks later, that flight was cancelled as well. Ok now it's maybe time to start panicking. Luckily, there was still another alternative to fly out from London City.

Unless anything goes horribly wrong tomorrow, I can still get there, albeit by a now rather complicated mixture of routes: London City to Edinburgh, Edinburgh to Stornoway, Stornoway to Glasgow, Glasgow to Heathrow. At least my lovely wife doesn't mind dropping off and picking up from various airports.

That said, we didn't fancy a Monday morning dash to London City and back, so I booked a hotel for the night and she kindly drove me there on the Sunday instead.

We decided that we would make a day of it and it would be a nice excuse for a day out in Greenwich. Given how stressful the Sunday lunch-time drive was, particularly around the congested bottleneck that is the Blackwall tunnel, we had definitely done the right thing.

After striking it lucky in the car park and catching someone who was just in the process of leaving (the parking spaces were in very short supply), we first walked to the nearby Queen's House. I was indulging my photography early and we wanted to see the Tulip Staircase, which is the ornate spiral staircase, which makes some excellent photographs when taken looking up from the bottom. We had to follow the circuit to get to it though.

By Queen's House, I obviously do not mean Buckingham Palace - although I'm sure I would be able to persuade the king (who lives there now) to let me take some pictures of the staircase if it's particularly photogenic. I'll ask next time I'm there.

We then walked up the steep hill to the Greenwich Observatory. Before going in for a look, we took in what was sign-posted as the best view in London. They're probably right - looking back at Queen's House and the Royal Naval College, behind which is the spectacular cluster of towers in Canary Wharf, to the left is the cluster of towers in the City of London and to the right is the O2 Dome.

Queen's House is free entry, but the observatory is £16. Definitely worth it as it was fascinating. Basically the history of navigation and time-keeping, how mariners solved the problems of navigating out at sea. The engineering that went into these time pieces was amazing, especially when you consider that they were made 400 years ago.

Determining latitude is apparently easy, but longitude had long since been a problem, to the extent that there was a £20,000 prize (equivalent to £3 million now) for anyone who could solve it. A solution came from a self-educated carpenter called John Harrison who invented the marine chronometer, which, after a few iterations, won him the prize by accurately calculating the time difference (and hence the longitude difference) from a known point. Each version was on display, the H1, H2, H3 and H4. A bit of popular culture, the chronometer that was discovered by Del Boy and Rodney in Only Fools and Horses was called the H6 (I'm not sure what happened to the H5?)

The meridian line is marked outside the observatory, so we did what we did with the line in Berlin (see A Two Brick Line Between Utility and Opulence) and stood on each side - my wife in the west side of the world and me on the east side. At least both sides are capitalist this time.

We headed back down the hill and had a walk around some more of Greenwich, including the Cutty Shark, which now seems to have some modern museum bonded around it, which, as far as I am concerned, spoils the look of it.

We then went to a fantastic Turkish restaurant for something to eat. There was some sort of accident outside our restaurant whist we were eating. The ambulance arrived just as we were leaving - an hour later. Appalling!!

After also stopping for some authentic Italian ice-cream from a place nearby, my wife drove me to my hotel (via what was still an horrendously congested Blackwall Tunnel) and whilst I was chilling in my room, poor her had to face the drive back all the way back to Hemel Hempstead.

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Photos

The Best View in London
Yes, unless anyone can tell me about a better one, I would have to agree!

The Tulip Staircase
The spiral staircase in The Queen’s House.

Telescope
The telescope in The Greenwich Observatory.

The H3
The third iteration of a John Harrison’s attempts to solve the longitude navigation problem.

East and West
Standing on opposite sides of the world.

Ship in a Bottle
Outside the Royal Maritime Museum (closed by the time we got there).

Greenwich Market
A spot of shopping.

Greenwich Foot Tunnel
There was no reason to walk across to the Isle of Dogs.

The Old Naval College
Walking back to the car after our meal.