The travels of Tim and Megan: Greenwich

Saturday was a reasonably nice, sunny day, so we decided to visit Greenwich. Unfortunately, we had not been able to go last weekend with Dave and Kiri, and we definitely wanted to have another poke around out there before leaving London, in just over a month's time. We got going fairly early and made the lengthy journey out to Greenwich, in south-east London.

It was just as well we did, as it was pretty quiet when got there at about 11am - by 1pm, it was rammed! We started off by grabbing a tasty snack and a milkshake at an old-school milkshake place, and then we wandered through the pretty streets of Greenwich village. We walked through the Old Royal Naval College, Sir Christopher Wren's domed masterpiece. Within the complex is the former college dining room, now known as the Painted Hall, and also the Chapel of St Peter and St Paul.

From there, we walked through the pretty Greenwich Park, part of which has been fenced off in preparation for equestrian events later this summer. The site will be used for the equestrian events of the London Olympics in 2012. We climbed up the hill in Greenwich Park to see Greenwich's main attraction, the Royal Observatory, the home of Greenwich Mean Time.

As the United Kingdom grew into an advanced maritime nation, British mariners kept at least one chronometer on Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) in order to calculate their longitude from the Greenwich meridian, which was by convention taken to have a longitude of 0 degrees. This practice eventually led to GMT being used worldwide as a reference time independent of location.

At the top of the hill is the Royal Observatory building where, naturally enough, there is a rather impressive observatory, and also a miniature museum of time-keeping devices throughout history. On top of the roof of the building is the large red Time Ball, which drops at a predetermined time to allow sailors to check their marine chronometers from their boats offshore. In the courtyard outside the building is a line marked in the ground showing the Prime meridian, or Greenwich Meridian, where longitude is 0 degrees.

There is also a pretty awesome 24-hour clock on the wall surrounding the Royal Observatory, which shows Greenwich Mean Time all year round (meaning it actually shows the "wrong" time when the clocks change for British Summer Time (or daylight savings)) - see photos below. We got some brilliant views from the top of the hill too - east to the distinctive looking O2 Arena on the banks of the Thames, and right back to the city centre landmarks of the Gherkin and St Paul's Cathedral.

After lying in the sun in Greenwich Park for a while, we had a wander through the Greenwich Market, where we bought some delicious fudge, and checked out the interesting variety of foods on offer as well the arts and crafts. It was pretty hot by now and Greenwich had been over-run by visitors. We had a quick look through the National Maritime Museum, which was well worth a look. Highlights included a miniature replica of Captain Cook's Endeavour and Lord Nelson's navy uniform that he wore during the Battle of Trafalgar. Then we rounded off our Greenwich visit at a local brewery, where we had a cold beer and some french fries. Delicious.