Thames Talk

Yesterday I walked a short stretch (4 miles) of the Thames Path for the first time. I took the tube to Canary Wharf and felt as if I’d landed in a N American city.

The tube station atrium is a breathtaking cathedral of concrete, steel and glass designed by Norman Foster winning five Wows in my book. It is a short walk past towering office blocks to the DLR station where dinky, driverless trains shuttle to and fro. I alighted at Cutty Sark and headed downstream along the south bank of the Thames.

The Thames Path goes in front of the Old Naval College past an obelisk in memory of Joseph René Bellot, a Frenchman who served in the Royal Navy. In 1851 aged 25 he joined HMS Phoenix to search for Franklin whose expedition in search of the North-West Passage had gone missing. He fell into a gap between two ice floes and the gallant lieutenant perished. This obelisk in red Aberdeen granite was erected by public subscription, a mark of the popularity and regard for this young Frenchman.

Between the Old Naval College and the Greenwich Power Station is Trinity Hospital, a group of alms houses originally built in 1613 and rebuilt in its current Gothic style in 1812. After this the river is lined with modern blocks of flats with more under construction necessitating an ugly detour inland. The views across the river to Canary Wharf are impressive but just one block in it is markedly less glamorous.

The path rejoins the river at the Blackwall Tunnel, opened in 1897. The original entrance is still just visible with the O2 Arena in the background. There were people walking on the roof of the O2, there must be a viewing platform, and a Drone flying overhead.

The path skirts round between the O2 and the river alongside a Driving Range and, you’ve guessed, more blocks of flats. This area originallycalled Bugsby’s Marshes has been re-christened Greenwich Peninsula, although it’s on a bend in the river and two miles from Greenwich. Ever since I’d left Greenwich there’d been an eerie ghost town feeling: no inhabitants, only construction workers. I felt that I was walking round a film set on a day they weren’t shooting.

The atmosphere didn’t improve but the walk became more interesting as I passed a series of sculptures and the Emirates cable car.

You couldn’t make it up could you? If you have spotted two people on deck, they don’t live in the sculpture but were doing some maintenance. I was more impressed by Antony Gormley’s Quantum Cloud, placed directly below the cable car.

Much the best sculptural installation came at my destination, the Thames Barrier.

The barrier between gates 8 and 9 was lowered and it looks remarkably like Richmond Lock built a century earlier.