London on my Brompton – Day 2: Greenwich and the Lea Valley

November 5th 2024

This was the second day of my London/Lea Valley tour whose aim was partly to rest my knee. I wanted to visit the Greenwich museums because sailing, boats and navigation has been a lifelong interest, but I also considered riding around more sights in the city; I opted against the latter as I had found the previous day unsatisfactory due to my lack of knowledge of where to go and the difficulty of parking my nice bike and luggage if I wanted to look inside buildings. So Greenwich it was! 

The restoration of Cutty Sark after the fire was much more impressive than I expected. The museum is about the ship – not the fire! The rig towers above her – a mass of ropes, chains, cables and spars. It was awesome and inspiring seeing people actually working aloft on my visit, moving slowly and safely. On the other hand, the museum says little about how the rig worked – perhaps that is a topic of interest only to old nerds like me!

The Observatory was another place which chimed with my interests and is central to the longitude story. The practical purpose of the Observatory related to navigation and time. The early work with the most accurate clocks of the time was able to demonstrate that the Earth rotated at a steady rate – so the apparent position of heavenly bodies could determine time. Later on the Royal Astronomers worked on the longitude problem. The museum celebrates the Harrison Chronometers which solved the problem and rather glosses over the opposition from the astronomers which delayed by many years his financial reward of the longitude prize money!

At both the Observatory and Cutty Sark I had to lock my bike up and leave it (I did ask if I could fold it and leave it indoors, to no avail). The Observatory had off-street cycle parking, but the Cutty Sark’s was very open and public but unsupervised.

My Brompton is quite old and has the original Sturmey Archer 5 speed hub and only a single sprocket. It works well, but the ratios are very high for my use: I seemed to be riding in 3rd gear most of the time on level ground. The descent from the Observatory was the first time I used top gear!

I had much too far to ride for the remaining daylight – but I just accepted that I would be riding in the dark on canal paths and decided to enjoy it. There was just one turn where I got confused by the route which was mainly NCN1 and well signed.

Lee Valley Hostel only offers private rooms. I was in a 2 bed room. One fellow guest was a film production assistant and it was interesting to learn about working in that industry. It was a nice place to stay, so I was quite happy that I would be spending the next night there too!