[HN Gopher] Where is London's most central sheep?
___________________________________________________________________
Where is London's most central sheep?
Author : GeoAtreides
Score : 204 points
Date : 2025-01-23 09:58 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (diamondgeezer.blogspot.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (diamondgeezer.blogspot.com)
| walthamstow wrote:
| While Trafalgar is known as the official centre of London, you'd
| have trouble convincing anyone that Vauxhall is more central than
| Spitalfields.
| gadders wrote:
| It's Charing Cross: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charing_Cross
| #:~:text=Since%20....
| walrus01 wrote:
| 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.
| dghf wrote:
| > I would think the center of the city would be some point
| equidistant centrally between the boundaries of the
| original roman city wall
|
| That would be the centre of the _City,_ but not necessarily
| of the _city._
| nicoburns wrote:
| Modern London encompasses two historic settlements (the
| city of London, and westminster). What is now consider the
| centre is somewhere between the two.
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westminster
| madeofpalk wrote:
| The center of the city has just as much (or more) to do
| with vibes than physical geography.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| Anything that is south of the River Thames is considered
| "South" (prounounced "Souf" in MLE [1]), no matter the
| actual distance.
|
| E.g. Waterloo Station would be considered South London but
| is actually at the same latitude as Buckingham Palace!
|
| Hence why a Londoner would never describe Vauxhall as
| "Central".
|
| Londoners would generally discount any part of this map
| south of the river from "Central London":
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Central_London#/media/File:Op
| e...
| Pinus wrote:
| 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.
| Quarrel wrote:
| 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.
| fredoralive wrote:
| 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).
| anyonecancode wrote:
| In a similar vein, for New York City the official highway
| distance to the city is measured from Columbus Circle
| [1].
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbus_Circle
| andrewaylett wrote:
| In Edinburgh, it's the old post office building at the
| end of Princes Street.
|
| Which is also where the A1, A7, and A8 meet.
| cesaref wrote:
| 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 are special laws for it, honours like Freedom
| of the City, it's quite an interesting place.
|
| Although the wall is long gone, there are place names which
| refer to it, and the gates which exited through it. So we
| have roads like 'London Wall' and locations like Bishopsgate,
| Aldgate etc. Newgate was added in the 12th century, so not
| exactly 'New' these days, so not a very future proof naming
| convention...
|
| https://leadenhallmarket.co.uk/history-of-leadenhall-market/
|
| https://inspiringcity.com/2013/04/13/the-seven-gates-of-
| lond...
| gadders wrote:
| >>Although the wall is long gone...
|
| You can still see chunks of the wall:
| https://livinglondonhistory.com/londons-ancient-roman-and-
| me...
| gadders wrote:
| 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.
| foldr wrote:
| There aren't any special laws for the City of London
| (except any local byelaws). The City is administered in its
| own unique way, but English law applies just like anywhere
| else in England.
|
| https://www.quora.com/Does-the-City-of-London-as-it-is-
| defin...
| walthamstow wrote:
| By far my most hated misconception about London. If what
| people say were true, every company in the world would be
| based there.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| The River Thames, confusing Londoners sense of space since
| times immemorial.
| steerpike wrote:
| 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 Bristol so much when we had
| such a hard time living in London.
|
| Could also have been that Bristol is just a crazy beautiful city
| to live in, but where's the fun in that, right?
| walrus01 wrote:
| Presumably this could be quantified through a call to something
| like the Google maps api for a specific lat/long starting
| point, for driving, walking or biking time in minutes, as an
| SLP (sheep latency protocol)
| f4c39012 wrote:
| there's also a measure of the minimum appropriate "time to
| sheep"
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humorous_units_of_meas...
| wheybags wrote:
| My metric for when you've left the city is "have I passed a
| field of potatoes"
| 369548684892826 wrote:
| This probably works best in Idaho
| walrus01 wrote:
| In the broadest possible sense, Idaho can be divided into
| "potato" and "non-potato" Idaho. For instance if you drive
| US95 through here (the creatively named Idaho County,
| Idaho) it's almost entirely wheat farms, and what isn't a
| wheat farm is either forest, wilderness or cattle ranch.
| The potato part doesn't really start until you get down
| into the whole valley/flat land area occupied by Meridian,
| Boise, Nampa, etc.
|
| https://www.google.com/maps/place/Grangeville,+ID+83530,+US
| A...
| reaperducer wrote:
| _(the creatively named Idaho County, Idaho)_
|
| New York County, New York says hi.
|
| (You may know it as "Manhattan.")
| vanderZwan wrote:
| POTATO LAND! POTATO LAND!
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xWtLw83_jE0&t=426s
|
| [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dwF3e78j7pw (official
| African mirror)
|
| [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8Jff85kMeU (official
| Asian mirror)
|
| (PS: curious how the video resolution gets lower with each
| channel)
| usrusr wrote:
| 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.
| jfk13 wrote:
| How large does the field have to be? I grow some in my back
| garden...does that count as zero, then?
| sevensor wrote:
| What I found striking about Seoul was that there would be
| three rows of potatoes in between a ten story apartment block
| and a busy highway. Not a square meter wasted on unproductive
| grass.
| dairylee wrote:
| 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
| gambiting wrote:
| I was going to say, I'm sure Desmond Dene has sheep there.
| rantallion wrote:
| If you mean Jesmond Dene, there's a petting zoo with a few
| small beasts and birds. I know they have a couple of breeds
| of goat but I don't recall seeing any sheep on my last
| visit (within the last month).
| gambiting wrote:
| Ha, yes thank you autocorrect. And they had sheep when I
| last visited couple years ago, maybe they got rid of them
| now.
| scott_w wrote:
| You still don't need to go too far, there's a fair few
| farms just outside Ponteland that have grazing sheep and
| I'll regularly cycle past farmers with their collies on
| the quad bikes on a Sunday morning.
| fiftyacorn wrote:
| 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
| oneeyedpigeon wrote:
| There needs to be a counterbalancing variable, though;
| presumably you want to live in a city, otherwise you'd just
| live in the countryside somewhere with a TTS of zero :) Maybe
| the other factor is "time for pizza to arrive at door"?
| riffraff wrote:
| there's presumably pizza in the smallest towns tho, I'd
| suggest Time To Theatre. Not because of the Theatre per se,
| but because "big enough to have a theatre" is probably a good
| proxy of "big enough to be appealing to people who enjoy
| something other than nature".
| macintux wrote:
| In Indiana, my favorite dinner theater is in a town of 500
| people.
|
| For a while, someone was trying to start a theater in an
| even more remote spot, an unincorporated community about an
| hour from there with maybe a dozen homes nearby, but they
| finally moved it to a large town.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| I think by "theater" the OP was implying professional
| theatre. Lots of small towns have theater, but
| professional theatre is a much higher bar.
|
| In my case, my old workplace in Ottawa, Canada had a
| "time to moose" of about 5 miles and a "time to theatre"
| of about 1/2 a mile. Sadly, the professional Opera
| company in Ottawa went bankrupt so we only have amateur
| Opera now, but we do get regular professional Broadway
| productions so it still counts.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| >"time to moose" of about 5 miles and a "time to theatre"
| of about 1/2 a mile.
|
| Unit of measure error: unit specified it time, unit
| supplied is distance
|
| :P
| drewzero1 wrote:
| Not sure how it is in Ottawa but here in the US Midwest
| distances are frequently measured in units of time. I
| might say I'm an hour from Green Bay or two hours from
| Madison, though I don't remember the actual mileage. That
| said, it usually only applies to distances over 20
| minutes (between 7 and 25 miles, depending on speed
| limits).
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| That practice is pretty widespread in Canada. Ever since
| metrification nobody is really sure whether the person
| they're talking to is more comfortable with miles or
| kilometres. So they just use time.
| mr_toad wrote:
| Walking distance from the Pub to home.
|
| More seriously, time taken to get to work.
| noneeeed wrote:
| I live in Bath, so quite a bit smaller than Bristol, but I
| really apprecaite the fact that we can be in the city centre in
| half an hour, or in the countryside in 15 minutes.
|
| If I didn't live in Bath I'd probably live in Bristol, it's a
| great city. And I absolutely agree that it's kind of the
| perfect size for a metropolitan area.
|
| I think a lot of London is saved by having so many parks, and
| so many large parks and commons. I know Paris has a lot less
| green space than London and when I visited I definitely felt
| that.
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| I like Bristol but the traffic is so bad. It desperately
| needs a tram system.
|
| Bath is nice though, my son lives there and we love visiting.
| noneeeed wrote:
| Hah, very true. I never drive there for a reason.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| Trams would be lovely, but buses would be a start!
| Apparently, there was once to be a new high-frequency
| service with six buses an hour between Bedminster and the
| Centre, but the residents launched a successful petition to
| stop the plans on the grounds that the buses would 'cause
| more traffic'. Twenty years on, it appears as if there are
| once more efforts afoot to improve the transport situation:
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn082k4v8zxo
| ta1243 wrote:
| What amazes me is how dense Westminster is, considering it
| contains Hyde, Green, St James Park and significant parts of
| Regents Park and Kensington Gardens
|
| Even with that, it's still the 10th most dense borough.
| beeforpork wrote:
| When I was in Bristol, the smell of burned weed was frequent.
| More frequent than other cities, I think.
| yapyap wrote:
| Might've also been a secret bonus in the TTS metric
| tonyedgecombe wrote:
| Bristol has the highest traces of cocaine in its sewage.
|
| https://www.itv.com/news/2019-03-14/which-uk-city-tops-
| list-...
| alt227 wrote:
| > Bristol was the only UK city participating in last year's
| research. London's wastewater, which has previously topped
| the cocaine chart, was not included.
| marbs wrote:
| I like that metric. If we instead consider "time to cows" then
| Cambridge does quite well. Midsummer Common, Stourbridge Common
| and The Backs have (seasonal) cows.
|
| https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-cambridgeshire-5616806...
|
| https://www.hiddencambridge.uk/#summer
| sandworm101 wrote:
| A better metric imho would be time to a wild animal. I'd go
| with distance to a wild bear, or anything else that could
| threaten a human. That is where wilderness starts imho. For
| London, that measurement is likely hundreds of miles. In much
| of north america, it is probably be less than one. I've been to
| the English countryside. It is more city park than open
| country.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| I've had bears in the ravine in my back yard but I don't
| think that really counts, it's still urban.
|
| But ~200 bears do live in Gatineau Park, a 140 square mile
| piece of fairly untouched nature that starts 5 miles from
| downtown Ottawa, Canada.
| wmanley wrote:
| Richmond park has Adders and Deer, both of which have the
| potential to kill you - but in practice would be very
| unlikely to. To get to the nearest wild wolf you'd probably
| have to look as far as the Ardennes in Belgium, which is
| roughly 400km away. For bears you'd probably be looking at
| 1000km or so in the Pyrenees on the French/Spanish border.
| themaninthedark wrote:
| We had a wild bear with cubs go into the dumpster for food at
| our university campus, this is North America of course.
|
| I don't know London at all but I would hazard that you have
| foxes and other wild animals living in the city, just well
| hidden. We have coyotes that have taken up residence in many
| American cities.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| I like your metric. I aim to get my time-to-sheep number down
| below 60 seconds. But if you mean "within a car driving down
| the road's distance to sheep", then I aim to get it to 0.
| skipants wrote:
| That's amazing. Now I want to see how relevant a "time to cow"
| metric is to Canadian cities.
| pomian wrote:
| That's an easy one. We call it "time to moose"!
| Dilettante_ wrote:
| That's definitely a metric you do *not* want to hit zero
| barrkel wrote:
| This only makes sense if you enjoy the English countryside.
|
| I'm an Irishman. I grew up in the countryside, in the west, and
| spent 15 years living in London in my 20s and 30s. I can count
| on one hand the number of visits to the English countryside I
| made that weren't on the back of a motorcycle, and then, I
| didn't stop except for petrol.
|
| The city is what I enjoyed, the chaos, the diversity, ambition,
| variety. No smaller city would be as good.
| baxtr wrote:
| Your preferred metric is "time to chaos" I guess then?
| walthamstow wrote:
| time to chicken shop
| pyrale wrote:
| Time to cow dung, the higher the better obviously.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That's also a problem with sheep, you know.
| dylan604 wrote:
| But do you mark off a field into squares and then place
| bets on which square the dung will be freshly found for
| sheep?
| pyrale wrote:
| This. Cow-bound Monte-Carlo analysis is already supported
| by a thriving community.
| xenocratus wrote:
| "Time to something I haven't seen or experienced in the
| past 3 years"
|
| Having spent more than 5 years in small towns, London has
| fixed my utter boredom.
| eppp wrote:
| I have lived my entire life in a a rural area, not even a
| town and it seems to me that every time I go to a city it
| is the same as the last. Everyone has their thing I
| guess.
| j4coh wrote:
| Time to sidewalk puke
| xenocratus wrote:
| Yes, obviously no small town has sidewalk puke, surely not
| in England!
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| If your metric is time or distance to large amounts of nature,
| I recommend Ottawa, Canada where the 140 square mile Gatineau
| Park starts 5 miles from downtown.
| alt227 wrote:
| > a metric designed to measure how enjoyable a city was to live
| in
|
| Your metric of how enjoyable a city is to live in is based on
| how long it takes to leave that city? The logical endpoint of
| that is moving to the countryside where the TTS = 0, which is
| very easy to achieve. Begs the question, why are you even
| living in a city at all?!
| simmonmt wrote:
| You can enjoy living in a city but also enjoy outdoorsy
| pursuits. TTS is a measure of your ability to do both.
|
| It can also be a measure of the maximum size of city you
| enjoy. There are people who like cities but still wouldn't
| want to live in NY/LA/London
| trgn wrote:
| > Bristol is just crazy beautiful city to live in
|
| Curious, because of geography? architecture?
| reidrac wrote:
| I'd like to know as well. I live in Bristol and is alright,
| but it may depend on which part of Bristol are we talking
| about ;)
| glompers wrote:
| Granted this photosphere [1, best on desktop, not mobile
| browsers] is not the view you would have whilst walking
| around, but it does evidence some sheep-accessible urban
| environs
|
| [1] https://www.bristol.ac.uk/virtual-tour/#s=pano26
| kabouseng wrote:
| In Africa I suppose we have time to lion...
| xemdetia wrote:
| I find this fun because I always described this metric as 'time
| to cow.' I suppose a sheep is fine too.
| jen729w wrote:
| Perfect. This is what struck us when we moved from Melbourne to
| Canberra. In both cities we live/d in the inner-city hipster
| suburb: Fitzroy, Braddon.
|
| In Fitzroy, any semblance of a sheep is at the least an hour
| away. It takes that long until you even _feel_ like you 're on
| the outskirts of suburbia. Leaving the city is a drag; so you
| don't.*
|
| In Braddon, we can ride our bikes for 15 minutes and see
| grazing cows. 15 minutes in a car and you're in rolling hills.
| It's magnificent.
|
| (*Which, to be fair, I didn't really want to most of the time.
| That's why I chose to live in Fitzroy! But then you get older
| -- 48 now -- and things change.)
| Aeolun wrote:
| I think my hometown has a "time to sheep" rating of like 30
| seconds. Possibly up to as much as 4 or 5 minutes if you pick
| your starting spot perfectly.
| Pinus wrote:
| Isn't there a recurring publicity stunt with sheep on Savile Row?
| =)
| walrus01 wrote:
| Looking at the satellite view of some grassy rooftops in the city
| of London (the square mile), it seems to me that a sufficiently
| motivated wealthy person could keep several sheep in a more
| central location. Some of those roofs look like they have more
| habitat space than the most central sheep lives in.
| defrost wrote:
| There are literal multi floor spacious underground bunkers in
| London beneath some of the more exclusive and expensive
| properties.
|
| A good many are known by filed dimensions, some are suspected
| to be larger than declared.
|
| While a number may be urban bunkers, others ostentatious wealth
| displays for shoes, clothes, jewels, and rare collectables of
| the very wealthy perhaps one is home to a rabbit .. or a sheep.
| walrus01 wrote:
| For all we know, some wealthy sheep collector has sheep in a
| 3rd level sub basement in their London townhouse, strapped
| into an oculus headset and roaming around on a multi
| dimensional treadmill through endless grassy spring time
| fields.
| dghf wrote:
| > some are suspected to be larger than declared
|
| I can't find a link now, but allegedly the Crossrail project
| accidentally tunnelled into one of these.
| gadders wrote:
| A friend of mine at a city brokers with a rooftop garden told
| me that one of the traders released some rabbits there.
|
| You could sit on the trading floor and look up and see them
| stretched out on the glass atrium roof sunbathing.
| Quarrel wrote:
| Finding the most central rabbit would be quite the task!
| shermantanktop wrote:
| By the time the survey is done the number will have
| changed. Instantaneous global knowledge is impossible,
| sadly.
| gadders wrote:
| FYI - he's published an update:
| https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2025/01/a-sheepish-apolog...
|
| tl;dr; - he missed a small zoo near Waterloo Station.
| Havoc wrote:
| Pretty wild to blog about that topic in particular haha.
|
| Those all look closer to sheep singular? Mudchute has maybe 30ish
| dkdbejwi383 wrote:
| As a long time DG reader, this is both really on brand and
| completely novel.
| willvarfar wrote:
| I clicked on it expecting an article on how to trip up LLMs.
| Refreshing change that it wasn't! :D
|
| So, do any LLMs give any humorously nonsensical answers?
| leprechaun1066 wrote:
| > they're goats, as any self-respecting three year old could tell
| you
|
| Sheep or goat? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCzZN--4Its
| ageitgey wrote:
| [Deleted as I missed the reference in the article]
| pseudonymcoward wrote:
| The author addresses this in the post.
|
| "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."
| shawabawa3 wrote:
| 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
| mxfh wrote:
| 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 (Domane Dahlem) and the impracticality of casual
| trips into the countryside with kids beyond the wall.
| throw0101c wrote:
| If anyone is in/visiting Toronto, Canada, there's a farm right
| downtown:
|
| * https://riverdalefarmtoronto.ca
|
| * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Riverdale_Farm
|
| * https://www.blogto.com/city/2018/09/riverdale-farm-toronto/
| dhosek wrote:
| Hmm, not sure where the closest sheep is to me here in the inner
| suburbs of Chicago, but there _is_ a goat farm a couple miles
| away in the Austin neighborhood. It's pretty wild seeing them
| take the herd to their pasture a couple blocks away from the
| house where their shed is in the back yard.
| te_chris wrote:
| My son loves the city farms. Mudchute one is huge and great.
| surfingdino wrote:
| No sheep in Canary Wharf? They have a farm there, don't they?
| Xophmeister wrote:
| Vauxhall and Spitalfields are much closer to Trafalgar Square.
| biomene wrote:
| That would be mudchute farm. But Canary Wharf is not considered
| part of central London, which is what the author is concerned
| with.
| Xophmeister wrote:
| Looks like there's an errata, already :)
|
| https://diamondgeezer.blogspot.com/2025/01/a-sheepish-apolog...
| jrmg wrote:
| Some good advice at the end of that:
|
| _1) Don 't state something as fact when you haven't researched
| it fully.
|
| 2) Remember that when you do state something because you
| believe it's fact, it could be based on incomplete information.
|
| 3) If you're not 100% sure about something, best introduce at
| least some element of doubt.
|
| 4) Don't trust everything you read just because somebody you
| trust presented it as fact._
| nottorp wrote:
| It also says "But they might have been goats.".
| asjir wrote:
| I think this was overly self-critical - what would
| researching fully even mean? They can have however many sheep
| they want hidden within one-mile distance from Trafalgar
| square, no-one would expect the author to scour every
| possible location ensuring that there is no sheep hidden lol
| just to make a funny post 100% sure to be true
| ajb wrote:
| Guy knows his audience though. All of his posts are
| incredibly prone to bikeshedding. If our main journalists
| knew that their output was going to be subject to much
| detail-oriented scrutiny, we'd have the best-run country in
| the world.
| jrmg wrote:
| Much of his bikeshedding is obviously self-deprecating
| humor to me. It's simultaneously both genuine _and_
| ironic.
|
| I think that people sometimes don't (can't?) quite 'get'
| that wry-but-also-sincere style that much of British
| humor exhibits.
| MrsPeaches wrote:
| > But you can't go in and have a look, they don't take walk-
| ins, only pre-booked groups and very occasional public events,
| the last of which was cancelled.
|
| This has a very Douglas Adam's feel.
| barrettondricka wrote:
| Wouldn't that need to be the sheep with the closest distance to
| all the other sheeps in London?
| shermantanktop wrote:
| In order to measure distance between sheep, you really should
| start from the center of the sheep. So let's make the math
| easier by assuming a spherical sheep in a vacuum...
| Theodores wrote:
| Never mind sheep, what about cats? Larry, the Number 10 cat has
| to be a contender.
|
| Considering the wealth of the nation was based on the woollen
| trade, with London being the place where weavers from Flanders
| made that wealth, times have changed.
|
| The Speaker's Chair in the House of Lords is still a wool sack,
| although, a few years ago, it was found to be stuffed with
| horsehair.
|
| The Royal Navy grew to defend the cross channel trade in wool and
| that led to 'Britannia Rules The Waves' in a big way, up until
| about a century ago.
|
| The British weather and the plague made it so that wool was the
| winning product, with the customers being the armies of Europe
| and the slaves that needed to be clothed. Although mining was
| crucial to the Industrial Revolution, wool was the original
| cradle of innovation. We owe so much to wool, and sheep.
|
| Oh, Fuller's Earth was also crucial to the success story, needed
| for cleaning wool, along with urine, which peasants provided all
| by themselves, in abundance.
|
| Other wool was not with the long, tough fibres that British wool
| had, hence the desirability of the product.
| captainbland wrote:
| Last time I was there they had grazing sheep in Green Park.
| That's pretty central!
| Rochus wrote:
| These poor sheep have to live on a concrete floor and hardly ever
| see a real meadow.
| mattkevan wrote:
| We used to live just a few minutes from the Oasis Waterloo farm
| and I can confirm there are indeed sheep. Pigs too.
|
| For being so central it was surprisingly rural - there were horse
| stables and an apple orchard with all kinds of rare varieties
| just over the road from our flat.
|
| As an aside, a family member recently became a Freeman of the
| City of London which means they're officially allowed to drive
| sheep over London bridge.
| eitally wrote:
| I can't speak for further up the peninsula, but the nearest sheep
| to me in San Jose is almost certainly at Emma Prusch Farm Park
| (http://www.pruschfarmpark.org/), which like the city farms
| mentioned in the blog, is a nonprofit farm in the middle-ish of
| the city.
|
| Depending where you live in SJ, though, you may be closer to
| Happy Hollow Park & Zoo[2], which also has sheep.
|
| From there you get into actual farms, and there are at least two
| within a few miles:
|
| Ray of Sunshine Farm in Almaden Valley (mostly focus on produce &
| goat cheese, but do have sheep):
| https://www.rayofsunshinefarm.com/
|
| and Deer Hollow Farm in Cupertino (another non-profit):
| https://deerhollowfarmfriends.org/
|
| From there, there are a bunch more sheep farms heading south
| toward Gilroy & Hollister, but that's getting a bit too far
| afield.
|
| Frankly, I'm actually surprised there were so many civic farms in
| the south bay.
|
| That said, for south & east bay folks, I think it would be a lot
| more interesting to track the roaming herds of goats used to keep
| dry grass & brush to a minimum in fire hazard areas.
| OJFord wrote:
| The answer depends when you ask:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_the_City#Freedom_of...
| jeffreysmith wrote:
| Chiming in to rep for our flock, the 5 most central sheep in NYC,
| conveniently located on Governors Island.
| https://www.govisland.com/things-to-do/recreation/hammock-gr...
| chris1993 wrote:
| For NSW it's time to dead kangaroo on the roadside
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