Another visit to Downe

Somebody else has visited Darwin's house and taken a stroll on the sandwalk. I can testify that it is surprisingly difficult to get to the place, unless you have a trusty native guide — but once you get to the village, it really ought to be easier than that to find the place.

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tags: Sandwalk, Down House, Darwin, nature, photography, London, England, Bromley, England, Professor Steve Steve Darwin's "weed garden" experiment, located near the pathway next to Down House, near the Gardens. Image: GrrlScientist 31 August 2008 [larger view]. Sunday, the day after the Nature…
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tags: Sandwalk, Down House, Darwin, nature, photography, London, England, Bromley, England Darwin's Down House near Bromley, England, a short train ride away from London. This view of the house was snapped from the gardens in back of the house. If you look closely, you can see part of the cafe (…

I want a R-Evolution-Ary t-shirt...

"Oh, will you just look at that! Professor Meyyerz's experiments with cephalopod growth hormones have finally resulted in his monstrous creations running amok."

"That, or his hideous and profane rituals have finally managed to summon Cthulhu."

By Owlmirror (not verified) on 09 Aug 2007 #permalink

One problem is that making places like Downe easier to find would mean an astonishingly large amount of signage in the UK. Culturally significant events have happened everywhere here. Almost every town and a great many villages have given rise to at least a couple of famous sons and daughters, some have given rise to dozens. There are astonishing historical artifacts which warrant little more than a label on an OS map and a few visitors a year.

It's probably the thing I like best about living in a place as "crowded" as the UK, the weight of history is astonishing.

Hmmm... Don't drink and comment. I've abused the word "astonishing" and misspelled my own name.

I'll go to bed now.

By Sam Cartwright (not verified) on 09 Aug 2007 #permalink

The Darwin exhibit (currently at the Field Museum) has a neat little recreation of the sandwalk. It isn't video, which would be best, but does cycle through sequential pictures along the walk, projected onto an entire wall, so it *sort of* feels like you're walking on it. Still would rather do the original, though!

We traveled to Chicago yesterday to see the Dinosaur and Darwin exhibits yesterday...very interesting! We spent more than 2 hours going through the Darwin exhibit. I particularly liked the displays of his notes...including the "evolutionary tree" sketch, examples of his plant collections, and his rock hammer :)

Liked the Sandwalk "recreation"... but also wished I could walk the original.

By Bob Vaiden (not verified) on 10 Aug 2007 #permalink

Down House and the grounds are lovely, well worth a visit. For those who aren't totally Anglo-averse, Churchill's home Chartwell, also in Kent, can be visited in the same day. I was rather shamed by Churchill's legendary writing habits-he would have gotten those manuscripts out efficiently.

I found both Down House and Chartwell with no trouble, even though I'm a dumb Texan. Maybe it's because we're used to sparse directional signage.

Actually Down House can be easily found using Google Earth. There is even a small article on it.

51°19'52.55"N
0° 3'12.15"E

Yeehaw! for more dumb Texans! If there's a dozen of us or so, there'll be enough IQ points to cobble together and make one Really Smart Person.

How'd you get lost, though, wussypants? The whole of England is, like, about the size of downtown Austin.

Only much tidier and less weird. ;-)