I haven’t watched the video, so I have no idea what the punch line is, but the line was pretty close when I was there.
So the true place for the prime meridian is about 80 feet or 24 meters to the east of the place marked as being such in Greenwich.
The coastal city of Dover is about 90 minutes from London by car or train.
There is a castle you can tour (sometimes - it was closed the day I went there in 2019).
You can also hike up to the top of the white cliffs and watch the ships coming into port. On a clear day (not likely in November, but maybe you’ll be lucky) you can see across the Channel to France.
How can the Prime Meridien be wrong? Unlike the Equator, it’s arbitrary. If I wanted to declare a new unit equal to the distance between my nostrils, no one is really in a position to define it besides me.
I gather that some astronomers picked an original location for the PM, then everything got measured relative to that, and then someone laid one along the ground in Greenwich to draw in the tourists. I wonder why they didn’t go to trouble of putting it in the right place.
The line at the Greenwich Observatory is not where a modern GPS would place it. It’s wrong because the old measurements used the local “vertical” determined by gravity, which is deflected by terrain nearby. GPS systems measure from the Earth’s center, so local gravitational effects are irrelevant
Highly recommended. My wife and I went to the last minute ticket place and got whatever was available. We ended sitting in the very back for Avenue Q, and it was excellent. I’d have happily taken in several others. This last trip we saw Starlight Express, which is near Wembley Stadium, not in the West End, but it was also loads of fun.
I did the Stonehenge coach ride last year. If you have high expectations, then you’ll be very disappointed. If you just want to see some of the most famous rocks in the world, then it’s fine. The biggest issue is just the amount of time it takes from London, and maybe it would be better spent doing something else you’d enjoy more. The rocks don’t dance or anything; you just walk in a big circle and look at them.
If you’re excited about the history of Stonehenge, it might be worth it, but you can’t trip over a cobble stone in London without landing on something historic.
Highly, highly recommend doing this. Once you figure out where you’re staying, search up some good local places.
My favorite pub in London is Seven Stars, just behind the London Courts (not old Bailey). The food is excellent and they have a cat that often wears a barrister’s collar.
Really, you can pick almost any “local” pub, and have fun. The afterwork thing is really amazing, with hundreds of lawyers and bankers in suits outside the pubs drinking pints out in the street.
Really, pick any local pub, and if you don’t like it, try another one.
If you like military history or airplanes, I recommend this.
I really liked Greenwich. The exhibits in the small museum of the best clocks of the 18th century (or whatever) were really interesting. I went in the summer, when the big green lawns and such were a nice change from the city. I don’t know if it will be the same in November.
I really like the UK in November. It is very dark and dreary, and when it’s really pissing out a nice warm pub is such a good experience.
For all the talk of trains over in GD, don’t overlook flights from London to Edinburgh. When I did it, flights were cheaper and faster door to door. That was even before the Elizabeth Line was open, which makes it cheap and easy to get to Heathrow.
You can get a drink in the Angel & Child, where Tolkien and Lewis used to hang out. I spent a lot of time in Oxford in the 2000s, but I was mostly working and going to pubs. It’s a pleasant town, and walkable.
It’s about a hundred miles from London, but if you want to travel that far, you could see Cooper’s Hill, near Brockworth, Gloucestershire. There’s an annual cheese-rolling context down the hill. You have to wait to May to see it. I lived near there once.
Mine shows it off by about 50 feet (0.8 seconds), but \pm 17 feet for the GPS accuracy. I have other pictures with the longitude at exactly 0°00’00.0", but it’s just the GPS in my hand, so there’s no context. I do recall when it was at 0, I could take steps back and forth to be at W0° or E0°.
It’s The Eagle and the Child. It’s temporarily closed. They also hung out at The Lamb and Flag across the street. Lewis and Tolkien and others were know as the Inklings.
Thanks, teach me to go from memory instead of looking it up to verify.
And teach me to proofread better, since it’s obviously “known”.
If WW2 history is of interest, Bletchley Park is worth visiting to understand the development and application of code-breaking (and the massive and rapid expansion of the organisation necessary to make effective use of it)
This was Thanksgiving 2023 in Greenwich, we had lovely weather, if a bit cold.
The Waterloo Graffiti Tunnel, for those who’ve never seen it:
I went last year, too, and it is pretty interesting. Don’t take the following description as being bad, just meant to set the tone so people can decide if it is worth a visit.
Most things at Bletchley Park were deliberately destroyed because they were classified. So there are lots of empty rooms, and very few original artifacts. The recorded audio tour is sort of a podcast of everything that happened there, and its importance in the war effort.
There is a certain gravitas in listening to a historical podcast while standing in the room where the events described actually happened. However, there is frequently nothing much to look at. Just some old photographs on the walls, or, if you’re luckly, a Bomb reconstruction.
I missed it, but my brother really enjoyed the nearby computer history museum that had actual working historical computers.
It might be a bit far for a day trip, depends how long you want to spend on a train (it’s about 2 hours each way from London’s Liverpool Street station), but Norwich is lovely and not a place you’ll see on the typical tourist lists, particularly for American tourists, I wouldn’t think. I come from Ipswich (local rival town) so if even I am recommending it, you know it must be worth it. It’s got some very well preserved medieval streets and buildings, a nice riverside walk from the railway station up to the city centre, a historic cathedral and a castle. Also some good shopping if that’s your thing. Oh and a superb selection of pubs.
You mentioned tikka masala. As a curry lover myself, please, do yourself a favour and find something more interesting than that. It’s the non-curry eaters’ curry of choice, i.e. bland and boring!
I know London reasonably well (as a British tourist) and I can recommend going on a guided tour, but specifically one that takes you off the beaten track and away from some of the typical tourist hotspots. I did one a few years ago that started at Covent Garden and ended outside the Tower of London, but it would its way through lots of backstreet and courtyards and nooks and crannies on the way there and was fascinating.
Been there, done that. It’s a pub, with a few plaques on the walls that talk about Tolkien and Lewis. I’m not sure if it’s really worth a special trip.
I’ll second (or whatever) whoever suggested the British Museum. Regardless of how they obtained their collection, it’s stupendous.
West End shows are a lot of fun, and I’m not much of a musical theater guy.
Westminster Abbey is worth seeing as is the Tower, and if you can swing a tour of Parliament, it’s surprisingly interesting.
In the UK, can you watch a soccer match on TV while it’s being played? I know in Welcome to Wrexham they once mentioned something about blackouts or something … is that true across all leagues? If I can’t get a ticket to see Chelsea in person, could I watch the match live at a sports bar down the street?
Not to mention Hogarth’s Marriage a la Mode.
I haven’t been, but my wife recommends the Churchill War Rooms.
Hidden beneath Westminster, explore the secret underground headquarters where the course of the Second World War was determined. Rain or shine, walk in Churchill’s footsteps and explore the historic war rooms. Glimpse what life would have been like for the men and women living and working underground.
By international agreement, the Greenwich Meridien used to be the reference line for longitude. It isn’t anymore.
The meridians were referenced to star positions.. When they worked out that they needed to re-reference the star positions (to account for new values of ‘vertical’ at various points on earth), all the meridians changed. It was easier to change the position of all the meridians, including the Prime Meridian, by small amounts, rather than to keep the position of the Prima Meridian and force larger changes elsewhere.