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Where is London's most central sheep?

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Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#31
If you're in Berlin, especially with kids, there more than a dozen of children's farmyards (not counting zoos and actual farms) all quite central in multi-centric Berlin. Mostly for (early) childhood educational purposes, so they are are prime spot for Kindergarten day trips.

https://www.berlin.de/kultur-und-tickets/tipps/kinder/kinder...

https://www.visitberlin.de/en/farms-children

Since most of them are in former West-Berlin the reason they exist can likely be explained from a mixture of empty lots not rebuild after the bombing in WWII, historical farms in outer Groß-Berlin (Domäne Dahlem) and the impracticality of casual trips into the countryside with kids beyond the wall.

Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#32

[Deleted as I missed the reference in the article]

you have made the tragic mistake of not reading literally the second sentence of the article:

> I'm not interested in temporary sheep like those that get driven over Southwark Bridge in September or shorn at the Lambeth Country Show in June

Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#33
post #20
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's also the confusion as to whether people mean 'Greater London' or 'The City of London'. For the centre of the City, i've generally thought that Leadenhall Market is the centre, given it is built on the original Roman Forum. For non-Londoners, the city was originally a walled city, and lies to the east end of what is now considered greater london. It's these days synonymous with the financial industry. There ar…

>>Although the wall is long gone... You can still see chunks of the wall: https://livinglondonhistory.com/londons-ancient-roman-and-me...

Also, if you want see some cool Roman stuff, there is a Temple of Mithras under the new Bloomberg headquarters near Cannon Street station.

https://www.londonmithraeum.com/

Free to enter, but pre-booking recommended.

Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#34

When my wife and I lived in Bristol we developed a metric designed to measure how enjoyable a city was to live in that we called "time to sheep". Basically it's a measure of how long you have to travel from the center of the city before you're in the English countryside surrounded by sheep and the best cities have a low (but not too low) "time to sheep" metric. It helped explain one of the reasons we loved living in…

Although it's not quite sheep Newcastle has a Town Moor (Larger than Central Park) which has grazing cattle. There's also a farm not too far from the city centre which has grazing sheep.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_Moor,_Newcastle_upon_Tyne

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03hm60d/p03hm2x8

https://maps.app.goo.gl/vojeS3eDTFznpYwMA

Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#35

When my wife and I lived in Bristol we developed a metric designed to measure how enjoyable a city was to live in that we called "time to sheep". Basically it's a measure of how long you have to travel from the center of the city before you're in the English countryside surrounded by sheep and the best cities have a low (but not too low) "time to sheep" metric. It helped explain one of the reasons we loved living in…

Edinburgh used to have 2000 sheep on Arthurs seat right in the center of town until the early 80s.

There were urban legends about student pranks of putting sheep into the halls of residence rooms

Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#36
post #27
post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some years ago, I was looking for London hotels on some booking site, and noticed that they were listed as being so-and-so many km (with .1 or even .01 precision) from London, which seemed amusing given that they were all in London. So I fired up QGIS and drew a circle (in some suitable projection!) with the indicated radius around each hotel, and found that they intersected on Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square.

As the parent indicated, this stuff is surprisingly standardised in London. Distance is measured from Charing Cross. The Cross is near Nelson's Column, but I would be surprised if the column was actually the central point. As others have pointed out, this leads to some weirdness, as lots assume that the City (old London & older Roman London) would be the obvious place to measure things from.

The original Charing Cross was at the south of the square, where the statue of Charles I is now. (The cross at the railways station nearby is a Victorian folly).

Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#37

When my wife and I lived in Bristol we developed a metric designed to measure how enjoyable a city was to live in that we called "time to sheep". Basically it's a measure of how long you have to travel from the center of the city before you're in the English countryside surrounded by sheep and the best cities have a low (but not too low) "time to sheep" metric. It helped explain one of the reasons we loved living in…

Although it's not quite sheep Newcastle has a Town Moor (Larger than Central Park) which has grazing cattle. There's also a farm not too far from the city centre which has grazing sheep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Town_Moor,_Newcastle_upon_Tyne https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03hm60d/p03hm2x8 https://maps.app.goo.gl/vojeS3eDTFznpYwMA

I was going to say, I'm sure Desmond Dene has sheep there.

Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#38
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's Charing Cross: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charing_Cross#:~:text=Since%20... .

As a non British person I would think the center of the city would be some point equidistant centrally between the boundaries of the original roman city wall, in the square mile, but the actual center of the city seems to have migrated since then.

The center of the city has just as much (or more) to do with vibes than physical geography.

Re: Where is London's most central sheep?

#40
post #9

When my wife and I lived in Bristol we developed a metric designed to measure how enjoyable a city was to live in that we called "time to sheep". Basically it's a measure of how long you have to travel from the center of the city before you're in the English countryside surrounded by sheep and the best cities have a low (but not too low) "time to sheep" metric. It helped explain one of the reasons we loved living in…

My metric for when you've left the city is "have I passed a field of potatoes"

Here in Germany I run an inverse of that for "am I in the wider halo of a larger city or am I in a truly rural environment": when approaching a metropolitan area, the outer urban halo starts where there are still farms, but many of them have switched to housing horses.
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