A MEAN TIME IN GREENWICH

After having slept in Saturday morning, there did not seem much of the day left for venturing too far. But we have been constantly thinking that we should be able to drive into London itself, and find a parking spot. It is a bit of a daunting task, because the traffic is pretty horrendous and you have to keep a very keen eye open for all sorts of signs and directions.

Anyway we took off down the A13 with Limehouse Station in our sights, as this is the last stop that our usual train makes before terminating at Fenchurch Street. It all turned out a bit of an anti climax with traffic flowing along quite nicely, the Station duly being spotted,and, after only a couple of circumnavigations we actually parked in a "Permits only Mon to Frid" spot which was exactly opposite the steps leading into the station. How good was that!!!

So we caught the Docklands Light Rail train and headed for Greenwich just a few stations away. The "Cutty Sark" is being refurbished so we were unable to visit , but we wandered on into the Greenwich Maritime Area, where a nice lady guided us to the central point anad told us some of the history of the area. Christopher Wren was the architect of the magnificent buildings which face the Thames, and behind which is the actual Greenwich Observatory. The buildings are all occupied, although the Old Royal Naval College is no longer used by the Navy but houses University activities.In the painted Hall Carol was accosted by who is a teacher at Harristown and was in UK visiting her son!!!

We had a light lunch in the Old Naval Hospital building and then went into the National Maritime Museum which is a building that was once part of the Royal Palace of Placentia once the monarch's primary residence in the 15th Century until the end of the 17th century.

The museum is free and contains more than one can possibly take in the couple of hours we had to spare. We were not keen to remain in London and drive back to home in the dark - b ut we did see quite a lot of the museum and certainly intend to return to the area for a further exploration. The other fascinating place we must go to is a pedestrian tunnel under the Thames which was constructed at the end of the 19th Century.