The Meridian Line and intro to London

East Grinstead is on the Greenwich meridian line since it's directly south of Greenwich England, the point on the globe that separates east from west. If you're from Canada you'll know about Greenwich mean time, which is the where the Royal Astronomical Observatory measured the time for decades and set the time signal, which we hear every morning at 10:00 am on CBC in Canada.

This is from their website:  
Essentially, mean time is clock time rather than solar (astronomical) time. Solar time varies throughout the year, as the time interval between the Sun crossing a set meridian line changes. But each day measured by a clock has the same length, equal to the average (mean) length of a solar day. It’s a way of standardising and regularising time so we can all know exactly what time it is for our (or anyone’s) location.

From 1884 until 1972 GMT was the international standard of civil time. Though it has now been replaced by Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), GMT is still the legal time in Britain in the winter, and is used by the Met Office, Royal Navy and BBC World Service. Greenwich Mean Time is also the name of the time zone used by some countries in Africa and Western Europe, including in Iceland all year round.Today GMT is reckoned from one midnight to the next.

After our trip to Hever Castle yesterday, Karen took us to the meridian line in East Grinstead. Above you'll see Harry and I standing right on the line, he's on one side of the globe and I'm on the other. 

We've had a wonderful time visiting with Karen and Ian and today we took the train up to Victoria Station in London to start the next phase of our trip. Karen came with us as she offered to treat us to high tea at Harrod's. It was amazing--more food than we could eat (sandwiches, scones, clotted cream petits fours, trifle...plus wonderful British tea). Here's a photo taken by one of the friendly servers there. Plus a couple of photos of the excesses that are for sale there. It's quite an experience.

I didn't even look at the prices of these treasures (which I'd love to have at my house) knowing they'd be way out of my price range.... considering a pair of kids' suede sneakers were selling for 320 pounds!

Tonight we're in our hotel in Kensington, having mastered the tube and the bus lines, and ready for a tourist day tomorrow.