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This Week's Walks - Archive

Please see the Saturday Walker's Club This Week's Walks page.

This is an archive of walks done by the Saturday Walker's Club. You should only need to use this page if the SWC website is down.

Tuesday, 28 November 2023

Evening Walk - Illuminated River: up to nine lit Thames Bridges (Tower Hill to Vauxhall or Battersea Power Station)

Length: up to 9.1 km 
Net Walking Time: up to 2 hours
 
Meet at 18.30 hours prompt outside Tower Hill Underground (Trinity Square Exit).
 
Transport: Tower Hill is served by District and Circle Lines, and has Tower Gateway DLR and Fenchurch Street Mainline Stations just around the corner. Vauxhall is served by the Victoria Line and by Mainline trains out of Waterloo. Battersea Power Station is the terminus of a branch of the Northern Line.
 
Late Start Points = Early Dropouts are aplenty: Monument/London Bridge, Cannon Street, Mansion House, Embankment/Charing X/Waterloo, Westminster, Vauxhall.
 
The aim of this walk is to see most if not all of the nine bridges participating in the Illuminated River Installation (https://illuminatedriver.london/bridges) at least from distance, while avoiding road traffic and Christmas Markets as much as possible. Meet at Tower Hill, walk down to the Tower then the Thames, and – with views of Tower Bridge, the most easterly of the lit bridges – turn right upstream. Keep to the Northbank to Blackfriars Bridge and cross over to the Southbank. Continue past Southbank Centre and Festival Gardens (Christmas Market contamination) to Vauxhall (6 km into the walk). 
 
Then walk on for another 3 km through the wilds of Nine Elms with its many diversions away from the Thames around assorted ‘Luxury’ developments all the way to the spanking new Power Station area with its tube station. Completists will want to initially bypass Battersea Power Station to dive under Chealsea Bridge for a gawp at the most westerly of the lit bridges: Albert Bridge, before returning to the tube station (or an establishment furnishing us with drinks and food).
 
Refreshments: Plenty en route and at the end. T=short.57

#/test/thomas/Illuminated-River-Tower-Hill-to-Battersea-Power-Station.gpx

1 comment:

Thomas G said...

5 at the meeting point, plus 1 other met under London Bridge, ie n=6 walkers on a w=clear-but-cold-night-with-near-full-moon .
We had picked a perfect night for this walk, as the various light installations on the bridges were clear to see from far out, so that at times three of them were in one framed view, initially accompanied by the Christmassy light show on the top section of the Shard, as well as the one on the Globe Theatre. The (relatively) newly opened part of the Thames Path around Queeenshithe was given the thumbs up, before Blackfriars Bridge was reached, where we switched over to the Southbank to avoid the road traffic.
Fewer joggers here than north of the river, but more strollers, then the inevitable food and drink kiosks with seasonal offerings around The London Eye. We passed w/o buying anything.
Instead, a little later we opted for a break at a pub just before Vauxhall and all 6 then walked on to Battersea PS. It seems that only the remaining Tideway sites stop the TP from following the river all the way, so sometime next year it should be completely unblocked one hopes.
In Battersea, 4 went for a very nice meal at an Italian restaurant, while the 2 others went for a drink or two in the arches.
Finest vistas: from the easterly end of the Southbank Centre/National Theatre stretch back to St. Paul's and the City, with the moon towering above; and two of the four chimneys of the PS with the moon above and inbetween them when we left the restaurant.