The effect is only slightly marred by theme park-style banners proclaiming The Millennium
The effect is only slightly marred by theme park-style banners proclaiming “The Millennium Starts Here” outside the Royal Observatory. Inside, fantastical clocks, telescopes and other measuring devices demand measured contemplation.But even here, you encounter a riddle. The pillar had been erected 60 years before the treaty, bang on what was then the meridian line. Along came Sir George Airy, who promptly moved the line, so 19 feet to the east of the obelisk, a small triangulation pillar was put up to mark that. One day, perhaps, the satellite people disputing his calculations will add a memorial of their own.The brand new Millennium Dome and the grand old maritime and astronomical buildings of Greenwich itself are arranged with such geometric precision that the line, for the first and only time, almost becomes visible. The view from the top of Greenwich Park is among the most stirring in the kingdom, sufficient to revive the weariest of walkers. Here, a viewing platform is being constructed to enable 20,000 revellers to watch a son- et-lumiere show of stadium-rockproportions, when four of the world’s most powerful searchlights will shoot an intense white beam so far into the sky it might well be visible at Pole Hill, on the edge of Epping Forest.Nowhere illustrates the meridian conundrum better than Pole Hill, where a modest obelisk lies in a clearing in the woods, commemorating the moment when the nations of the world synchronised their timepieces and momentarily silenced the French.
But, where the meridian is concerned, it’s never quite as simple as that. The Dock is another of the line’s unsung landmarks: the starting point for many a sea voyage that enabled Britannia to rule the waves – and carry the vote at the Longitude Treaty. “There’s no such thing as bad weather,” he tells me, “only bad clothes.” Thousands are coming, including a coachload of Women’s Institute members from London. And the television trucks will return next mid-summer for Bob’s piece de resistance – a miniature dome, modelled on the real thing in Greenwich, made out of 30-foot long scaffolding poles, ropes and bunting.On the night of 31 December, the line will literally come alight, when 20 beacons in towns and villages along the meridian will be triggered into life by a signal from East India Dock, directly across the Thames from the Dome itself. Yet nearly every settlement along the line throws up a handful of those slightly oddball characters.
That’s why Swavesey, near Cambridge, will feature prominently in national television coverage on 31 December.Swavesey (population 1,800) is the home of the indefatigable Bob Stone, a retired councillor who’s organising an all-night knees-up in the market square, with sunshades over the tables in case of rain. He estimates the start- up costs to be pounds 40,000, and it may be several years before the Meridian Way takes its place among our great long-distance footpaths, although the first chestnut marker posts, donated last month, will be hammered in next year.MOST OF the people I’ve encountered living on or near the meridian have only the vaguest perception of the fact, as if it was something they’d learnt in a geography class at school. He has recorded all 112 locations where the route crosses the line (each will have its own wooden marker.) He has noted every point where a stile, footbridge, tunnel or maintenance work is required, and he has even devised a “scenic” 48-mile diversion between Holbeach (Lincs) and Somersham (Cambs), to spare mere mortals from the unremitting Fens.So far, David Pott has attracted much interest from eminent individuals and societies, but nothing in the way of funds. Three of them – Mali, Burkina Faso and Togo – are among the poorest in the world. The notion of linking the privileged north with the deprived south has since been taken up by a project called On the Line, which will connect diverse communities in the UK and Africa: fish-smokers in Grimsby and Ghana will come together; allotment holders in Glasgow will rub shoulders with market gardeners from Mali.Developing that theme of reconciliation between people who wake up at about the same time every day but who live on opposite sides of the tracks, David Pott is campaigning to turn the English section of the meridian line into a permanent way; a national path of pilgrimage where walkers can link up with less fortunate people in far-off lands.”I want to see the meridian put on a par with the equator”, says Mr Pott, “where people attach significance to the act of crossing it.”To that end, he’s spent much of the past year surveying every yard of the line between Humberside and Sussex, threading together in his notebook existing rights of way to create an unbroken 254-mile footpath. The pole became a line on a map and the snake turned into a path.When he awoke, David immediately realised where his subconscious had been guiding him. He noted that the meridian passes through the affluent acres of England, France and Spain, and then traverses five countries in Africa.
Oh, what treasures to raise the meridian walker’s spirits after all those punishing miles from nowhere to nowhere.EARLY ONE morning in the autumn of 1997, David Pott had a dream, one so vivid that it woke him instantly and changed his life. David, 53, belongs to a religious community near the meridian in London. He’s also a long- distance walker, who that same year had trekked the 680 miles between two of Britain’s great religious centres, Iona and Canterbury.His dream re-enacted the Biblical story of Moses setting up a pole in the wilderness for the children of Israel, and a bronze snake curls around it But in the dream, the image was distorted. There are two sculptures, an avenue of trees, a line embedded in a pavement mosaic, and a Meridian Gateway depicting the heavens (only slightly disfigured by graffiti).
Category: Travel
