The one with the bridges
The day was all along the Thames, but that provides surprising variety.
Beginning where I finished the last leg (which was before a few slight interruptions, to climb in Yorkshire and to go exploring Galloway), I arrived at Tower Bridge and headed west. This leg was essentially along the Thames Path. (The plotted route on this page is the Thames Path on the north bank, without all the diversions I needed to do in fact: when I walked it, there were roadworks everywhere, with paths closed and diversions into backstreets. I will omit those from the narrative.)
Past the Tower of London, its ancient towers clad in sunshine and tourists, I entered the City of London. Its streets may glitter with finance, but the riverside is a jumble, as the old docks were here and wharves still operate: here are riverside restaurants, wharves, Old Billingsgate, and London Bridge and Canon Street Bridge and Southwark Bridge, Queenhithe Dock, the view across the The Globe, then the Wobbly Bridge, piers of a variety of styles, and on until the Blackfriars Bridges. It is a good, broad riverside walkway that the Corporation have built all along their domain on the river.
Emerging onto the Embankment by the Inner Temple and then Westminster, the path is broad beside a busy road, where Victorian London showed itself off. Egyptian motifs on the cast iron benches presage the rearing up of Cleopatra’s needle, while ahead is the Palace of Westminster. It is a pity that the ugly block of the National Theatre stares from across the river.
Westminster Bridge, then around the Palace of Westminster, and off to Victoria Tower Gardens. Across the gardens and it is back to the river, opposite Lambeth Palace and to Lambeth Bridge. Crashing on down the river nothing is quite ordinary here – much is old but more is being rebuilt. Over Chelsea Creek (on a very odd-looking bridge) in a modern apartment tower development, and all after that is full of new towers for luxury living-in-a-small-box living. The traditional, leafy Chelsea reasserts itself – the Royal Hospital, best known for the Chelsea Flower Show, is along here.
(I have stopped noting bridges – they become too frequent – Chelsea Bridge, then Battersea Bridge then Albert Bridge are famous or infamous enough.)
I kept along the river as I could, or diverted inland to a street. Eventually the Hurlingham Club blocked the riverside and sends the path on a long diversion round it, through a public park and to the edge of Fulham. I stopped for lunch in Fulham Palace Gardens by Putney Bridge. All this unbroken townscape is unsettling for the country mind. Towns should stop and give way to fields, but here even where there are parks these are a concession in a great bulk of building, where towns merge and are indistinguishable.
A gentler part of the urban river followed. The path runs over the balcony of Craven Cottage Stadium (Fulham FC apparently: I prefer a good walk), and then north to Hammersmith. That is a fine place, by the bridge, with boats and swells, out in the summer heat, with fine houses. It is at the top end of loop of the Thames, and beyond is Old Chiswick. Chiswick Mall is genteel. The grand houses here have tall steps and flood barriers. (Flooding is frequent at the spring tide: In AP Herbert’s Misleading Cases in the Common Law, a rowing boat collides with a car and the rower successfully claims that Chiswick Mall when flooded is part of the High Seas and so under admiralty rules vessels must pass port to port.)
In the river’s southern loop are Duke’s Meadows, with long steps for observing the Boat Race. Then at Chiswick Bridge the path is sent inland along Chiswick’s suburban roads, until the famed Strand-on-the-Green, and from there to Kew Bridge.
Brentford is not my favourite place. Around and over the docks at the mouth of the Brent and the Grand Union Canal the route is thoroughly puzzling. Eventually though it emerges from the tangle, pops along th main road, and enters Syon Park. Cattle grazing to my right and kites flying and bicycles flying by – until Isleworth. When I reached the riverside, it was low tide and the channel between there and Isleworth Ait was practically dry: no longe the mighty Thames but a trickle, where great boats lay wallowing in mud.
It is not far from Isleworth to Richmond, all along the river, by a lock, a footbridge, under a road and a railway bridge, and finsihing the day at Richmond Bridge. Not a bad day at all.
See also
- Middlesex Border Walk – Staines to Hatch End
- Middlesex Border Walk – Hatch End to New Southgate
- Middlesex Border Walk – Southgate to Potters Bar
- Middlesex Border Walk – Potters Bar to Tottenham Hale
- Middlesex Border Walk – Tottenham Hale to the Tower
- Middlesex Border Walk – Tower Bridge to Richmond Bridge
- Middlesex Border Walk – Richmond Bridge to Staines