To Tenerife and all points West! (Not a travel post, more a 'time zones for the primary pupil' posting)

I'll start by saying that I have just, at the age of 69 or whatever I am (and don't get me started on 'how did THAT happen')  started to understand time zones! 

For your info .... the time in Tenerife in the Canaries, 300 km west of Morocco, where I am till this Saturday, is the same as the UK, ie an hour earlier than in Spain and the rest of Central Europe. (ie when it's 6 pm in Spain  it's 5 pm in the UK and Tenerife).

I've always just known as facts that the west coast of the USA is 8 hours behind us, the east coast is 5 hours behind us, Brazil is 3 or 4 hours behind us... I can't quite ever remember which way Europe goes.... but I've never had a clear illustration in my mind of how this works before last Saturday. 

Look away now if you don't even know what I'm talking about because this concept is so clear to you and you've never had a problem with it ...

but for me I'm VERY happy!  I love understanding things rather than learning them (that's why I passed Maths and English and French and Latin and Physics and Geography but failed Biology and History at O  level... because the subjects I passed were, to me,  just a matter of understanding concepts and absorbing connections, and the subjects I failed were, as far as I could see,  to do with learning lists of unconnected facts. But maybe they were just badly taught)

anyway here goes....

How Time Works, a story by Auntie Fiona

On the ferry from Huelva in Spain to Tenerife in the Canary Islands I was trying to find a nice place to watch the sunset, having FORGOTTEN to watch it on the ferry from Portsmouth to Santander, an omission that really pained me.    We'd arrived on the Huelva ferry at midnight, and I'd seen the sunrise that morning from the stern.  So I realised I had to get to the bow (the FRONT) to see the sunset. There weren't any accessible decks at the front of the boat - the only place to watch it  was through the glass windows in the self service restaurant (which was closed in the afternoon).  So I established myself there at 3 in the afternoon (Spanish time) before it closed, got myself shut in, and waited for the sunset.    Which didn't come and didn't come!   the sun was still really high in the sky by 5 pm.  

And we were sailing directly West towards the sunset.

Although the time on the BOAT was 5 pm - the boat has to choose a time zone, otherwise, as the man at reception told me, everything would fall apart and no-one would know what was going on (!) - the   real time in the area was patently, and obviously, earlier than that - the sun was still quite high in the sky so the local time was more like 4 pm, and the sunset wasn't going to happen for another couple of hours. 

And it  suddenly dawned on me that the further round the circumference of the globe we went, sailing (well motoring really) towards the continually sinking sun, the further away the sun would get and the later it would be till it set and till it was actually evening, wherever we were. 

 So...behind us, they would have already have had their evening, or their 5 p.m., or whatever, and in front of us we still had to reach our evening, or our 5 p.m.   So, our time would have to be EARLIER than the time of the people behind us/east of us. 

Which means that it makes total sense that Tenerife is an hour behind Spain and Morocco, and Brazil is a further three hours behind.... 

woop!  

ok, now back to travel blog writing.... (with the next post promising photos of  a spectacular whale watching trip  with a swim in the bay in the shadow of the Teide volcano yesterday, and earlier in the week a lovely day out with old friends in Santander) 

the photos are  actually of the sunRISEs - coming into Santander last Thursday, and Gran Canaria on Sunday morming, where the boat docked before arriving in  Tenerife on Sunday afternoon.