Cutty Sark & National Maritime Museum

So what to do on a dismal Easter? Well obviously the first thing would be to move Easter to a fixed position later in the year. Far too early this year. Obviously God botherers can fill the churches thanking the lord for giving us chocolate eggs and Bank Holidays. But for me a bit of a vacuum.

I managed to write off Good Friday happily enough by having a night out with a mate on Thursday. We only met for a drink, but the night just went on and in the end we just stayed up all night talking. So eventually I got home by 9am and tucked myself up in bed to catch up on the sleep I had missed in the last 24 hours. Saturday went on chores and watching football, but by Sunday I wanted something to do. Now there are several exhibitions I wanted to to see, but those would be packed. And a good walk would have been appealing, were it not for the absolutely perishing cold. So to find an attraction that wouldn't be very attractive, but would be indoors. I picked a trip to Greenwich to see the Cutty Sark, now back on display after a small fortune had been spent on restoring her after a fire.

I actually got off a stop early on the Docklands Light Railway at Island Gardens. Before you get any ideas, this is the East End really, so don't picture flower meadows. Its a rather bleak patch, with a rather unexciting (but "important") modernist sculpture (woman with fish) fenced off in splendid isolation.

 My purpose in getting off early and therefore on the wrong side of the Thames was partly to take some photos of Greenwich Naval College from the other side

and partly to use the Greenwich foot tunnel, which I had never been through before. While the two entrances are jolly enough domed buildings, the tunnel itself needs a major clean up. It felt more like a sewer than a pedestrian passage.

So was it worth it? Well, not really. As an attraction the Cutty Sark doesn't have a great deal to show for the £12 entrance fee. That didn't mean there weren't queues nor that it wasn't overrun with kids. But it is quite small really, and it was a tea clipper, so while interesting its not exactly romantic - no pirates or sailors flogged by cruel captains. This was mercantile travel, the equivalent of going to look round a freight train. I don't doubt they have done their best with it in terms of displays, but there just isn't very much there.

By far the best thing to see is the brightly shining copper hull from underneath. A definite photo opportunity and rightly what is featured in all the publicity shots..

And some of the figureheads displayed near the hull.

Nearby in this Maritime heritage area in Greenwich is

the National Maritime Museum.

 More figureheads on offer here too in a bright airy covered over central square. This is more of a proper museum, although being Easter break, also full of kids whose parents were desperate to find something child-friendly to do. It does feel a bit of a hotchpotch of themes vaguely around boats, but sometimes rather tangentially, like the extensive exhibition on the slave trade, or Imperial India. Ok, boats were needed, but there might as well be an exhibition on oil, which is also conveyed by sea.

 More figureheads on offer here too in a bright airy covered over central square. This is more of a proper museum, although being Easter break, also full of kids whose parents were desperate to find something child-friendly to do. It does feel a bit of a hotchpotch of themes vaguely around boats, but sometimes rather tangentially, like the extensive exhibition on the slave trade, or Imperial India. Ok, boats were needed, but there might as well be an exhibition on oil, which is also conveyed by sea.

The best part was the special exhibition on the work of Landscape photographer Ansell Adams. This also has just a very tenuous link with the sea as a small number of the photos were of surf crashing against rocks. Most are just his epic views of the US national parks, like Yellowstone, and so not at all nautical. You do feel they are a bit desperate to fulfil their brief.

The other item on view I liked is the stained glass recovered from the Baltic Exchange, blown up by an IRA bomb, but meticulously restored and now sitting here.