Visiting London also means visiting the river Thames. I’ve spent many hours at its riverbank, crossed it endless times via bridges and using the Greenwich foot tunnel. So far I hadn’t taken the opportunity to go by boat on the lifeline of the city which is an easy pleasure: you don’t need to find a commercial tour operator, there are ferry boats that you can use just like any other means of transport. You can just tap in and out with your credit card and it doesn’t cost a fortune.
Currently the service is named Uber Boats and is operated by a company called Thames Clippers. They divide the Thames into three zones:
- East Zone: From Barking Riverside via Greenwich upstream to Canary Wharf.
- Central Zone: From Canary Wharf via Tower, London Bridge, Westminister, Vauxhall to Battersea.
- West Zone: From Cadogan upstream to Putney.
Obviously the central zone is the most interesting of the three. Best option is to take a boat from the Tower down to Battersea passing Shakespeare’s Globe, the Millennium Bridge & St. Paul’s cathedral, Tate Gallery of Modern Art, Somerset House, London Eye, Big Ben, the Palace of Westminister, the MI6 and ending at the former Battersea Power Station which now has been turned into a giant shopping mall with a great atmosphere.
The boats are partially open, offer a small bar and you can check their schedule in the Uber app as well as in Google Maps. I would simply find my way to one of the jetties – at least every half an hour a ship will pass by. The Thames (in latin Tamesis) is 346 kilometers long and the second longest river in the UK (after the Severn). It begins in the Cotswold Hills near Kemble and passes Oxford and Reading before it reaches the capital city and flows into the North Sea east of London.
Thames
London
England
United Kingdom
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