Monday,
May 22nd. Happy Birthday Dad!
I was up at 7 to pack, get organized and had breakfast with John and Lindsay. She is off to work and John has an online course this morning. He dropped me off at the Exeter St David’s train station. It is always hard for us to say goodbye to each other but at least this time we know the next time we’ll be together: we’ll meet up on September 1st in Yellowknife in preparation for our Arctic trip; so that made it easier. I had bought a ticket last night to London Paddington for 9:43. I was at the station early and wasn’t really thinking or paying attention and boarded the 9:15 train. This was not the train I was supposed to catch and was a rush hour train and thus more expensive… oops. Not sure what the conductor will say… I am sitting on the train in a melancholy, reflective mood watching the lush green English countryside go by while listening to England’s greatest musician, Steven Wilson. I had a great time with John and Lindsay, great to see him and meet her. The conductor went right by me… When I arrived Paddington, I saw a little kiosk that said, ‘fares to pay’. I figured that meant I would have to pay a surcharge of more than 30 pounds if I exited the turnstiles, so I decided to stay on the platform for a half hour. I saw a group of young school children eating their lunch on the platform and fell to talking with their teacher. She brought them to London on a school trip for a week! They are going to museums, sight-seeing and to a play. Great to see teachers doing good things. Then I exited and found the Elizabeth line train to Canary Wharf. When I got on there was an announcement that there were ‘severe’ delays, but it left about three minutes later. When I got to the Canary Wharf station, I got a text from Bruce saying when he got to the Canary Wharf station they told him the line was closed for some reason. He went home and sent me new instructions how to get there via another route; but I arrived anyway. Remember I had no SIM card in my phone, so I was lucky to have WIFI provided by the rail system. Anyway, he sent a message telling me to take another line and get off at Greenwich Station where we successfully met up. We walked back to his place and had a cup of tea. It was now about 1pm, so we headed out to explore. We walked up the hill to the large and lush Greenwich Park, where we saw a statue of the British General Wolfe who defeated the French General Montcalm on the Plains of Abraham thereby wrestling control of Quebec away from the French. He became a hero for the British since that lead to the British taking Montreal as well and gaining control of the French colonies. Then we walked through it to Blackheath and then to the Royal Observatory which is housed in the park. The museum is dedicated to two very important scientific disciplines. The first was about how to know where you were when sailing away from land. Once you are on the open seas, landmarks are no longer available for navigation. ‘By 1700, sailors had already worked out their position north and south (their latitude) by using the sextant, but still lacked accurate instruments or methods to calculate their east-west position, known as longitude. With growing international trade, the lives and valuable cargoes lost in shipwrecks made solving the longitude problem urgent for all seagoing nations.’ In 1714 the British government offered huge financial rewards for a method of determining longitude at sea. One solution was an accurate and portable sea-going clock. One self-taught clockmaker and carpenter named John Harrison took up the challenge and over the next 45 years devoted himself to the task. The museum shows the four stages of development of his clock which went from huge and incredibly complex to the final ‘H4’ model which looks like a large pocket watch. He had to account for the ship’s motion and temperature changes. It is said to be one of the most important machines ever made. The second part of the museum was dedicated to the observatory where they had models of different telescopes used over the centuries, up until the last one that is still mounted here and was used for ‘weighing double stars, measuring the diameter of planets, Saturn’s rings, comets and the changing magnitude of variable stars.’ Got that? Amazing what they discovered. One of the astronomers that worked here was Edmund Halley, of the comet fame. We stopped at a pub and had a couple of pints, then tired and hungry we headed back to his condo. We met Pam there and he made us a pasta dinner. We had a relaxed night of talking before an early bed.
No comments:
Post a Comment