Beneath London's streets the water pipes leak; they were installed the century before last, and are showing their age. All across London the roadworks continue; the water pipes are being dug up and replaced. By 2010, proclaim the signs, another Victorian relic will be gone. With so many living or working in the Greater London region, standard use outstrips local supply, so fixing the pipes helps reduce the amount of water that must be pumped from elsewhere. There have been hosepipe bans to save on water use during the hot summers of recent years. Late last year, with fine irony, they even revised the legislation in preparation for this year’s summer.
It's September already, and summer is yet to really start, with its months of rain and threatened rain and intermittent sun between the stretches of grey mugginess when there should have been days of unclouded blue. The nicest day of the summer occurred the day before I arrived, I'm told; since then, the weather has been temperamental at best. By all reports it's been the most miserable summer since they started recording rainfall. There are floods across the country, and the likelihood of further flooding if more rain arrives.
With important UK cities being lowlying ports, there are dire warnings of insufficient planning for sea level rises. Recent reports suggest that the Thames flood barrier downstream from Greenwich will not be able to protect London from storm surges that may be four metres higher than the current level. The attendant at St Katharine's Pier told me that high tides were higher now than she'd seen them before. She pointed at the green algae ringing the pilings on Tower Bridge. If predictions of rises are correct then the river will be splashing the bridge's mechanical parts before too long.
Two millenia back, the Romans were growing wine grapes in the Midlands. If predictions of temperature rises are correct, then before the century's out there'll be vineyards up there again. There is always, however, the hope that the dire predictions could be wrong. After all, four decades ago climatologists were suggesting that global cooling and a return to ice age was a possibility. During the Little Ice Age four centuries ago they even held “frost fairs” on the frozen surface of the Thames in winter. The world was colder, then, and the Thames ran slower.
The river might be faster and warmer now, but using the waterways remains slow. It took Kathrine and Peter weeks to bring their 50 foot narrowboat, Iron Maiden, down from Cambridge, a journey that can be completed in three-quarters of an hour by express train. The network of canals and rivers enable inland passage from the south of England to north of York and from the Channel to the Irish Sea. I’ve taken two canal rides – a half hour waterbus up Regents Canal from the London Zoo to Little Venice, and a four hour trip on Iron Maiden up the Paddington branch of the Grand Union Canal from Greenford to Kensal Green.
Canal travel is measured in “lock miles”: add the number of locks passed through (in my case, none) to the number of miles travelled and divide by four to get a reasonable approximation of the number of hours a journey will take. Seaborne travel, on the other hand, required exactitude. While latitude - how far north or south you were - could be determined accurately using visual instruments to measure angles of sun or stars, to determine longitude – how far east or west of the Prime Meridian at Greenwich you were - required the development of extremely accurate timepieces, chronometers. In addition to displays astronomical, the Royal Observatory at Greenwich is filled with chronometers and displays of the development of accurate timekeepers. This includes the four original chronometers developed by Harrison – the three earlier ones are rather large and complex and would not be out of place cased on a mantelpiece, and the final prize-winning one is far smaller, like an oversized pocket-watch.
Even when it rains - and it did - Greenwich is pretty when you stand looking down from Observatory Hill across the northern stretch of the park to the Thames and beyond. Below the observatory lays a wide expanse of grass, and the buildings and connecting arcades of the Queen’s House and Maritime Museum. Between there and the river lie the buildings of the former Royal Naval College, now moved to Dartmouth on the south coast of England.
Sea-traffic has moved too. The wharves and quays and docks used to be the hub of Britain’s trade routes. Now the ships unload their containers further closer to the sea, and many of the landings are private: the Hilton Hotel has a liveried attendant at the gate on theirs, St Katharine’s Dock is a precinct with not only a hotel and shops, but apartments and a marina too; and what’s now Canary Wharf in the Docklands has been redeveloped as a cluster of glass-faced highrises, with trade there to challenge even the primacy of the Square Mile of the City of London. Beneath Canary Wharf’s canyoned streets lie a network of air conditioned malls, with shops selling goods brought from foreign lands, and water that’s been bottled and chilled.
