Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Thames Path 02 - London Eye to Kew Bridge

Sunday 15-Jun-2012

The second leg of our upstream journey produced some lovely sunny weather.

Thames Path 02 - the walkers
Alan, Andrea, Bill, Mary, Mark (me).

One thing about walking through London is that you cannot move for historic buildings.
At one point we passed a mooring with a number of cormorants which caused me to declaim the Christopher Isherwood poem:

    The common cormorant or shag
    Lays eggs inside a paper bag
    The reason you will see no doubt
    It is to keep the lightning out
    But what these unobservant birds
    Have never noticed is that herds
    Of wandering bears may come with buns
    And steal the bags to hold the crumbs.

We passed through Battersea Park and Wandsworth Park which are Grade II listed parks. I knew buildings could be listed but it was news to me that parks could be as well. According to English Heritage there are 1,601 registered historic parks and gardens.

Thames Path 02 - Wandsworth Park

Lunch was at The Boathouse right by Putney Bridge where we joined by Ros for part of the afternoon segment.

Thames Path 02 - Lunch at The Boathouse

The remainder of the walk took us past the splendid Victorian engineering of Hammersmith Bridge designed by Joseph Bazalgette.

Thames Path 02 - Hammersmith Bridge

We passed through Barnes and over the river to walk the north bank for a while. Then back over Chiswick bridge for the final stretch to our end point at Kew Bridge and the train home.

Distance this leg 22.6 km
Previous leg 21.3 km
Total so far 43.9 km 

Thames Path 02 - the walkersThames Path 02 - Houses of ParliamentThames Path 02 - Battersea Power StationThames Path 02 - Battersea Dogs and Cats HomeThames Path 02 - Peace Pavilion, Battersea ParkThames Path 02 - Inlet at Battersea Reach
Thames Path 02 - ComorantsThames Path 02 - Wandsworth ParkThames Path 02 - Lunch at The BoathouseThames Path 02 - Hammersmith Bridge, detailThames Path 02 - Hammersmith BridgeThames Path 02 - The Terrace, Barnes
20120715-thames-path-02, a set on Flickr.

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