London – Second Visit

I’ve spent the last 2.5 weeks in London. It’s mainly been about getting ready for Asia and catching up with a whole heap of my friends in London, but I’ve also managed to do some sightseeing.

The primary touristy thing I still had to tick off my list after my first trip was a visit to the Royal Greenwich Observatory. It was closed the first time because of they were having to get ready for the Olympic Equestrian events. At least now it was actually open, however the usual access up through the Greenwich Park was still closed which was disappointing.

I’m pretty obsessed with geography, and so it was pretty awesome to get to the Observatory. They had a really good planetarium show, and I obviously got to stand across the Greenwich Prime Meridian!

A long long time ago I read the great book Longitude by Dava Sobel. It’s about the race to develop a reliable method of calculating longitude anywhere in the world. This mainly documents the work of John Harrison to create accurate timepieces that aren’t affected by the movement of ships like pendulum clocks were.

Here’s his final timepiece, the H4.

Back in the day I used to play in brass bands and we played a piece called Harrison’s Dream, inspired by this work.
You can listen to Cory Brass Band play it here:

I also happened to be in town for the Notting Hill Carnival. Over a million people go over the weekend, but I got there quite early so the crowds weren’t too crazy. They close off the whole area, and have lots of good (mainly Caribbean) food stalls, lots of live music, a parade and a heap of cheap beer. It must get pretty rowdy later on as all the windows and doors are boarded up!

I also took the train up to Cambridge for a night for a work-related visit. It was really nice having a look around the colleges, which are a hell of a lot more impressive than the Dunedin ones!

So yeah, the rest of my time in London has mainly been about catching up with a whole heap of friends who are over here. Even with this much time I’ve struggled and a few I didn’t make it to unfortunately.

I’ve also been getting ready for the next phase of the trip. A huge part of the time was trying to get my Chinese visa. It came through in the end, and I’ve got a 90-day tourist visa which is great!

As I write this I’ve got less than 20 hours left in London, as I’m due to fly out to Tokyo tomorrow.

A lot of time was taken up at the amazing Stanfords Map Shop.. Oh I could’ve spent so much money there!

It’s been pretty busy trying to make sure I’m ready to fly- airing out my MSR cooker so it’s safe to take on the plane, buying maps for Asia and packing everything up. But now everything’s good to go, my bike’s in a box and my ride to the airport tomorrow is sorted.

So once I get to Tokyo I’m staying the first night at a campground about 15km from Narita Airport, then riding into the city the next day (about 70km). I’ll stay there for about a week before heading down south somewhere. My route’s still pretty variable, and I don’t know where I’ll go afterwards, whether I head straight to Shanghai or go via Korea to Beijing.. Lots of decisions!