Greenwich Palace

Rain today, but mercifully not the downpour as promised by the Met Office, it’s saving that for later. More a sort of gentle drizzle, and we’re used to this (and much worse!) at Greenwich. You can tolerate it but after a while it messes up the monitoring sheets and makes them soggy, so more of an eyeball (and in some cases photographic) survey this one, though some measuring is done.

Today there’s a big slick of mud, starting at the scheduled area and running all the way down almost to the Queen’s Stairs. This phenomenon is usually the result of heavy overnight rain, as is the case this morning. We have a new Greenwich FROG with us today, so we take the opportunity of the poor weather conditions to generally have a ramble and introduce her to the site. Yes, inevitably there have been changes and yet more erosion. We see features standing much prouder than we remember, and we catch up with some of the baseplate timbers from the medieval jetty outside the Trafalgar Tavern, several hundred yards down the foreshore, not the first time this has happened. We have, indeed, sometimes retrieved them to put them back in situ so we can properly record what the structure looked like before it started to break up.

There are timbers which run down into the water, and it is decided they need measuring. John gets ‘volunteered’ for this, while the rest of the group stand at the water’s edge, full of advice on how to do it! Shortly after this we decide to call it a day, and wend our way to the excellent ‘Old Brewery’ café and bar in the equally excellent Discover Greenwich visitors centre, for coffee, snacks and conversation. One thing Greenwich certainly has in plenty – facilities!