14-Jun-2004 -- This is the second of two Intrnational co-operation visits today, about 90 minutes ago we visited 52N 1W....

....and now we are pulling up and parking. We are about half a mile from the CP. This road actually passes over the Prime Meridian, but is a narrow country lane so parking there is not practical. We stop at the entrance to the Bridleway and put on our walking gear.

It has been the hottest day of the year so far and the heat has mellowed to become a glorious early summer evening, just a hint of a breeze to take the edge of the warm sunshine. We set off confidently for the CP - after all it is my third visit to this place - more of which later.

What you see is typical English countryside with gently rolling fields bounded by woodlands. As we are walking along the path towards the CP we saw something unusual - two small deer burst out of one field, ran along the path and plunged into another field. Far too quick to get a photograph of.

The bridleway then goes under tree cover, and is a very pleasant walk, in a nearby field a farmer was baling hay, looks like Peter found it interesting! After a nice 20 minute gentle walk we arrived at the Prime Meridian.

We can confirm - via three separate GPS units - that the tractor tracks through the crop are aligned exactly with 0.0.0, Peter speculated that perhaps the farmer had done this so that people like us wouldn't damage the crops...now there's a thought. I had told Peter and Werner about my Garmin unit flipping between showing W 0.0.0 and E 0.0.0 and Peter's unit did the same. After a bit of discussion we decided that maybe it measured more precision than it displayed hence the flip/flop.

We then simply walked from the edge of the field out into the wheat crop along the tractor lines. As I remarked earlier this is my third visit to this visit, the most recent being just two months ago. Then the crop in the field was just two inches high, this shot shows it has grown slightly!

I have made repeat visits to several sites - 55N 2W, 54N 2W, 53N 3W, 53N 1W, 52N 1W, 52N 1E, 51N 0W - in the hope that they would look different, but disappointingly the views hadn't really changed much. A big change this time though and I am glad we made the visit, particularly as this is the first visit to the Prime Meridian for either Werner or Peter.

Location shots were taken - North, East, South and West, the GPS Montage completes the set. On the way back we came through the small village of Barkway, stopping to look at the 700 year old church.

We finished the day off by going for a cold beer in my local pub.