Day Fourteen - London - 24 May

It was the last day of our holidays in England before setting off for a couple of days in Singapore to break our journey home. It was a hot and hazy day and it quickly sapped our energy. We stored our luggage at the hotel and headed via the Underground to Greenwich to see the Cutty Sark and the Royal Greenwich Observatory the home of the Prime Meridian and Greenwich Mean Time. It took us about an hour and a half to get there via three different train routes.

On first sight the Cutty Sark looked larger than we expected at the end of Greenwich High Street on the edge of the Thames River. By the time we arrived it was very hot and our view down the Thames was restricted due to the haze. It was very hot within the boat’s hull and it didn’t take Henk nor I long to realise we needed to have a break in the café and have a cool drink. When we recovered we felt we could go back and tour the remainder of the boat.

The name Cutty Sark comes from a Lowland Scott’s term for a ladies’ short shift. This garment was worn by the witch Nannie in Robert Burn’s poem Tam O’Shanter. Tam was chased by Nannie and he just managed to escape, but not before she pulled out the tail of Tam’s horse. The figurehead of the Cutty Sark is Nannie the witch with an outstretched arm with the horse’s tail. There was also a display of a large number of ships’ figureheads at the Cutty Sark exhibition.

The ship has been beautifully restored and is now three metres above the ground floating with supports over the refurbished dry dock. We then moved onto the Royal Observatory at the top of the hill. We decided to go through the park rather than through the main street of Greenwich. Unfortunately, the signs to the observatory ran out and we had to ask several times for directions. Making it more difficult was the large equestrian arena which is being built in the park for the Olympics. We had to walk around this before climbing the hill. By the time we got to the top we were very hot. The view from the hill down the Thames was very good despite the haze.

We lined up with everyone else to place one foot in the west and the other in the east before setting off to the Observatory exhibition. We returned to the hotel by five o’clock to be organised to get to the airport for six o’clock. This is the last of our holiday blog. We have had a wonderful and varied holiday touring the Isle of Wight, the Channel Islands, waking from the west to east of England on the Coast to Coast walk, East Anglia and finally London.