Blogs from Greenwich, Greater London, England, United Kingdom, Europe

Following on from the previous photography workshops to Rannoch Moor and to Dartmoor (see and 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 ... read more

When we planned this trip, the UK had announced that they would open to everyone on July 10th. Consequently, we purchased tickets for theater, Highclere Castle and the Globe for dates after that. After we left the US and were well underway in our travels, the UK announced that they would not open up until July 19th. Anyone arriving before July 19thwould need to quarantine for 10 days. We had lots of discussions on what to do, our options: 1. Go to the UK and take our chances that things would change, 2. Go to another location from Paris and wait for July 19th, 3. Go home. We decided quickly that we didn’t want to go home so we started thinking about where we might want to go for 10-days and how we’d spend the 5-days ... read more

My brother-in-law Steve works for National Maritime Museum in London and is able to offer us the family entry to Cutty Sark, the historic vessel standing in the heart of Greenwich. We met up with Steve and his son Bryn at Waterstones, and Steve took us to the café in the Cutty Sark. A spider has been found at Bryn’s school lately, and because of this, his school has been closed; that’s why he was able to join us. Cutty Sark is a survivor of the clippers that crossed the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans in the 19th century. We firstly looked round the 1st floor desk where boxes of tea were safely loaded from harbours and kept whilst being travelled. I could recognise some of the Chinese characters which are the same meaning as Japanese. It ... read more

I’ve always had this romantic idea of Greenwich, the home of the prime meridian, the arbiter of time throughout the world. Imagine what things would be like without Greenwich Mean Time and the Prime Meridian. Not only would you not be able to pinpoint your location on earth, think about the difficulty of doing business between, say, New York and Geneva, and the nightmare of coordinating flight schedules around the world. I made my way from central London to Greenwich by boat, definitely the fastest and most fun ways to get anywhere along the Thames. Adjacent to the pier in Greenwich is the Cutty Sark, once the fastest sailing ship to ply the long routes from England to bring tea from China, and later, wool from Australia. Now it is permanently dry-docked and turned into a ... read more

Have arrived in London and made a long cab ride across peak hour traffic on the last day of school before Easter holiday - hectic!! Spent the day with our wonderful friends Leanne and Glyn and their boy Griff. Tess and Leanne are school friends, so a big high to the 'Rita's Reds' back home. A quick bus ride and we were walking across Blackheath parks, down past the Greenwich observatory and to the Old Royal Naval College. Greenwich marks the Prime Meridian, the point everyone bases their navigation of longitude from, such a British thing to claim everything revolves around them but probably understandable when you consider the volume of sea trade at the time. The Old Royal Naval College is now largely a university so the area has a great vibe with markets and ... read more