Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
home for the museum's vast maritime
art collection
, including works by Reynolds, Hogar-
th, Gainsborough and Turner.
CUTTY SARK
King William Walk Cutty Sark DLR 020 8312 6608,
www.rmg.co.uk
.Daily 10am-5pm.£12.
MAP
Wedged in a dry dock by the Greenwich Foot Tunnel is the majestic
Cutty Sark
, the world's
last surviving
tea clipper
. Launched from the Clydeside shipyards in 1869, the
Cutty Sark
was more famous in its day as a wool clipper, returning from Australia in just 72 days. The
vessel's name comes from Robert Burns'
Tam O'Shanter
, in which Tam, a drunken farmer,
is chased by Nannie, an angry witch in a short Paisley linen dress, or “cutty sark”; the clip-
per's figurehead shows her clutching the hair from the tail of Tam's horse. After a devastat-
ing fire in 2007, the ship has been beautifully restored and now includes a museum beneath
the ship's copper-lined keel displaying a collection of more than eighty ships' figureheads.
GREENWICH PARK
Cutty Sark DLR.
www.royalparks.gov.uk
.Daily dawn-dusk.
MAP
A welcome escape from the traffic and crowds, Greenwich Park is a great place to have a
picnic or collapse under the shade of one of the giant plane trees. The chief delight, though,
is the superb view from the steep hill crowned by the
Royal Observatory
, from which
Canary Wharf looms large over Docklands and the Dome. The park is also celebrated for its
rare and ancient trees, its royal deer enclosure in “The Wilderness” and its semicircular rose
garden.
