Greenwich Squirrel Fest

Twas a lovely day today so we trotted on out to Greenwich to visit the Royal Observatory. Smashing place, lots of lovely people. It feels like a little shanty town, which is nice after spending time on the DLR (light rail) weaving through the monolithic glass monstrocities of the docklands. You honestly feel like you are aboard the Crimson Permanent Assurance when you ride the DLR.

The observatory is very interesting. As one would expect there is a hell of a lot of information about clocks cluttering up that place. The visit has renewed my interest in reading Dava Sobel's "Longitude: The Story Of A Lone Genius Who Solved The Greatest Scientific Problem Of His Generation".

Other interesting facts: Sir Isaac Newton published John Flamsteed, the first Astronomer Royal's star maps and charts without his permission; Flamsteed managed to buy all but 100 copies of it back and he then burnt them in front of the observatory.

Edmond Halley, second Astronomer Royal, mapped the stars for an ambitious 18 years but much of his data was unusable because he was lazy and didn't bother to keep his instruments properly calibrated.



After our visit we took a turn around the grounds and we were mobbed by tens of thousands of inquisitive grey squirrels. Twenty exaggerations later we woke up and it was all a dream. Luckily we woke up in a Spanish restaraunt eating tapas.

You can see all the fun here.

For squirrelly goodness, check out this little video:



They are so cute, next time we are going to bring some arsenic laced peanuts. Yummy!

Tags: London, squirrels