Trip to Greenwich

As my youngest brother and his family who live in California were over in England on holiday, I thought that it would make a good day out to go to Greenwich.
It seems like I was wrong.
I had visited Greenwich on my own a couple of years ago and had found that the place was a building site with access denied to many areas. They were filming the most recent, and most boring of the Pirates of the Caribbean series at the time. However I did at least manage to get to the Greenwich Observatory to see the Harrison clocks, and the Prime Meridian. Most of the points of interest around Greenwich are free of charge to view.

The weather in England has been very poor with endless rain and little sunshine. This day was looking to be much the same , but one has to make the best of it.

We took the train to Waterloo and then walked to the quays by the London Eye.
Here we boarded a river cruise to Greenwich.

The sky was grey but at least it was not actually raining.
The recently opened Shard now dominates the skyline south of the Thames.

On arriving at Greenwich we saw the Cutty Sark which again has just been recently re-opened to the public after it was partially destroyed in a fire.
It does seem that many attempts to renovate things actually end up in a fire engulfing the object in question. Maybe this is a tactic to extract greater sums of money for the renovation, or maybe it is just plain incompetence.


We decided to get some lunch and visited this Pie and Mash shop where we had "pie and mash". It was very nice and excellent value for money.


After our lunch it was time to go exploring. However we did see "The first shop in the world" nearby.


As we walked towards Greenwich Park it soon became clear that once again the whole place was a massive building site. It seems that some Olympic events were being carried out here. The entire Park was closed. The amount of building, steelwork, seating, electrical and communications infrastructure being installed was staggering. It must be costing millions. Most of it looked brand new and there were hundreds of construction workers. All this for a temporary structure.

We did attempt to walk around the Park to see if there was any access at any point but there was not. The best we could manage was to find a plaque in the wall on a northern boundary.


What a disaster, and it was threatening to rain all the time.
We made our way back down the hill and did at least pay a quick visit to the Maritime Museum. Soon after we boarded another river cruise boat back to Waterloo and a train ride home.

Avoid Greenwich.

Peewit