Summary (by AI): I was thrilled to discover the Otford Scale Solar System in Kent, finding it a tremendous and mind-blowing installation due to its accurate scale and incredible global extension to the nearest stars.
Blog: Recently, for my birthday, my son bought me a book called Weird England. It was a perfect choice because this ABC tours, means I essentially drag him around to various oddities across the country.
While flipping through the book, I stumbled across an entry for the Otford Scale Solar System. I looked it up and realized it was in Kent—specifically, it was only about 20 minutes away from where I was planning to be a week later. I was heading to the Caterham factory because I’ve been thinking about buying a Caterham car, so the timing was spot on.
Now, Otford isn’t situated in your typical, picturesque Kent Weald or perched on the Dover Cliffs. It’s in that slightly strange part of the county that sits right in the junction of the M25 and the M26. If you know the area, you’ll know it’s essentially a triangle of motorways. Otford sits right in the middle of it. Following Google Maps to get there was an experience in itself; I must have crossed over or under the motorways three or four times just to reach the village.
Once I actually arrived, though, it was quite a nice spot. Google Maps directed me down a very dirty, very muddy track to get to the playing fields where the solar system is located. I parked up, trekked across the mud, and found the installation itself. I have to say, it was fantastic.
It’s a genuinely accurate scale model. The Sun sits at the center, represented by a large ball, and then about 15 or 20 feet away you find the closest planets—Mercury and Mars. Then you get to Earth, which is just a bit further along. Seeing it all laid out like that, you really get a sense of the scale; the size of the Earth compared to the Sun is incredibly small, which isn’t surprising, but it's still striking to see in person.
The further you go, the more you realize just how massive our solar system actually is. Some of the outer planets—specifically Uranus, which always makes me laugh—are located all the way back in the village. It’s a serious walk to get to them. There’s even a pillar for Pluto, which obviously isn't officially a planet anymore, but it's still included. That one was about a mile and a half away, right in the middle of a farmer's field. I would have walked to it, but it was so wet and muddy that day that I decided to save it for another time.
What’s truly mind-blowing, though, is the broader scale. Because this is a 1:5 billion scale model, the project actually extends across the entire globe to include the nearest stars. I’d heard rumors of models as far away as Bolivia, but it turns out the "local" star, Proxima Centauri, is actually represented by a model at the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles! There are others as far afield as the Falkland Islands and Sydney, Australia. That effectively makes this one of the largest—if not the largest—statue installations in the entire world, which I think is just tremendous.
I’m very grateful to my son for the book and for pointing this one out. It fits perfectly into my "Obscura" category, even if I did have to wedge it in there!
The Map: