Length: About 11¼ km (7 miles). Toughness: 1/10
Meet up for an 11:00 start on the south bank of Westminster Bridge, as described in the second half (Westminster to Putney) of the L=swc.282 : “Turn left out of Westminster tube station. Cross the bridge. Go down the stairs at the far end (in the direction of the London Eye). Meet at the bottom of the stairs. You can see a Pret à Manger café nearby.”
If it's more convenient you could travel to Waterloo station and make your way to Westminster Bridge from there.
In response to some anguished pleas for less muddy walks, I thought I'd offer a straightforward riverside route from central London. It's described as entirely on hard surfaces, so comfortable footwear might be a better choice than walking boots.
There are stretches of the Thames Path on both the north and south banks for much if not all of the way, and the written directions offer suggestions for where you should cross to the other bank. You could of course simply follow the GPS route, but the small print warns that the two are ‘slightly out of sync’ and so you might find yourself on the opposite bank at times.
The directions mention that the recommended route in #10 (Vauxhall Bridge to Chelsea Bridge) will change when the pedestrian riverfront around the Battersea Power Station redevelopment is open to the public; does anyone know the status of this?
As always there's no leader for this walk. It's entirely up to you whether you detour into any of the tourist attractions along the way, break for refreshments or walk straight through to a pub or café at Putney Bridge. You can return from either the main line station (trains to Clapham Jct and Waterloo) or Putney Bridge (on the District Line, but note that its branches from Earl's Court to Richmond and Ealing Broadway are not running this weekend).
2 comments:
It's now a no name cafe.
N=11 on a w=sunny day. There aren’t many walks where your boots end up cleaner than they started but this is one of them. A day mercifully free of mud and nature. A few trees and bushes tried to spoil it but mostly nothing. Just glass and concrete. Bliss. The occasional duck on the river but you expect that. Somebody said something was a heron. Maybe it was.
No lunch stop today just on and on till Putney was reached. There, a kindly Wetherspoons helped replenish the alcohol/ caffeine deficit.
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