Sailing Route

The sights on your Tall Ship river voyage

Whenever you cruise on the Thames, you connect with an amazing history. On a Tall Ship, the experience of the history and sights is at its most special. The river of what was once the world’s largest port and the inspiration for Conrad and Dickens, flows along with you into twenty first century London. Each bend and twist is a journey through time as well as place. Seeing these sights with towering masts above is an unforgettable experience.

The Royal Arsenal Pier at Woolwich is your boarding point. Adjacent to ‘Firepower’ – the Royal Artillery Museum, a set of beautiful and austere buildings and the home of incredible quantities of munitions for more than 300 years. This is the start of your journey west into the capital.

Your next landmark is the hulking ten steel gates of the Thames Barrier, the world’s second greatest moveable flood barrier after the Oosterscheldekering in Holland. Protecting London from floods and water surges, they are a marvel to see up close, their silvered housings futuristic and impenetrable.

As you round the tip of the peninsula, the giant skyline of the Canary Wharf district towers ahead, one of the iconic images of London as a world capital of finance. This land is the Isle of Dogs, wild marshland until expert Dutch engineers were able to reclaim the area in the seventeenth century for the capital from the powerful Thames.

You will see few clues to the huge Millwall and West India docks amongst the skyscrapers here, but this area was a vital part of the port infrastructure that made up the Docklands, the hub of the vast British Empire from the 17th century to the 20th Century.

It’s all too easy to be entranced, gazing at the towers of Canary Wharf but looking to the port side now, a more tranquil and serene scene awaits you. Equally grand but in a vastly different way, the sights of Royal Greenwich greet you. Like looking between two different epochs, the contrasts of London’s ever-present history are stark. The grand balustrades and columns of The Royal Naval College, The National Maritime Museum and up the green slope of Greenwich park, the Queens House and The Royal Observatory leave you in no doubt why Greenwich deserves the privileged title of a Royal Borough to be bestowed in 2012.

Newly reopened in 2012 after a huge restoration project following a fire in 2006, the famous Cutty Sark tea clipper stands beside the glass dome of the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. This now landlocked ship is one of the icons of Britain’s great age of sail, a national treasure that has circled the globe many times powered only by its own square sails.

Back round the other side of the Isle of Dogs now, sailing past the far side of Canary Wharf, the wharfs and docks of London become steadily more closely packed now. Brown store houses front the waterside, many now converted into swanky London penthouses and apartments. This prime real estate was not so long ago part of a downtrodden and run-down part of London, a bleak and empty landscape. Imagine rewinding just one hundred years and the riverbanks here would have been flanked with scores of Tall Ships loading and unloading their cargo from all corners of the globe.

Continuing further west towards the gateway of Tower Bridge, still just out of sight, the districts of Wapping on the north bank and Rotherhithe on the south show the extent of how far this docklands landscape stretched. Modern developments mix with renovated wharfs and a distinctly residential town feel is pervasive. Quiet and handsome apartments with balconies and glimpses of locks lined with quiet pavements give few clues to the vast and busy metropolis just round the corner. Look to starboard to see famous pubs such as the Prospect of Whitby, intriguing and historic spots that deserve your own journey of discovery once you are on dry land again.

 And then, seemingly sudden, Tower Bridge is in sight straight ahead. Arguably the world’s most famous bridge, its design is unmistakable. Opened in 1894 and operational since then, this superb bascule and suspension bridge is a breath-taking sight from the Thames.  As a grand finale to your fabulous journey, the rare privilege of entering this gateway to the capital is unforgettable. As traffic is stopped all seems suddenly quiet as the great bascule road sections slowly raise for your passage. It seems a salute from this majestic landmark for such a handsome ship as yours, recognition of a shared history from a time long gone.

This is the Pool of London and you are surrounded by sights and landmarks, all a stone’s throw away. Butler’s Wharf, Hay’s Galleria, the egg-like City Hall, the Tower of London, the warship HMS Belfast. Straight ahead the immovable London Bridge signifies that you have reached the half way point of your journey. The City skyscrapers to the north and The Shard, one of London’s newest towers to the south over London Bridge station, mingle effortlessly with countless historic buildings all around reminding you of the journey you have taken through one of the world’s greatest and oldest modern cities, on its best asset – The River Thames.