For the first time in London’s history, it’s possible to walk along the north bank of the Thames, from the Houses of Parliament to the Tower of London, without straying more than a few paces from the river.
It’s been made possible by the January 2026 opening of the Bazalgette Embankment near Blackfriars Bridge, more on which later.
Today’s newsletter, is, I think, the first-ever write-up of this improved walking route, and it’s a walk I think anybody would enjoy.
Start: Westminster tube station (turn left after ticket barriers to emerge beside the Thames).
End: Tower of London
Distance: 2.4 miles (3.9km), entirely flat and wheelchair friendly.
We start the walk at one of the most photographed locations in England. Pedants will tell you that “Big Ben is the name of the bell and not the tower, which is properly the Elizabeth Tower”. I’m inclined to be contrary. ‘Big Ben’ has become such a near-universal nickname for the entire structure that it’s about time people got over the point-scoring and just accepted the colloquialism. The Houses of Parliament are a world icon of democracy, so the democratic name should trump the one imposed by the establishment. Anyway, Big Ben is not the bell, it’s the largest of five bells, and is itself just a nickname for the Great Bell. But I’m digressing before I even get started. Sorry about that…
The Queen Elizabeth Tower (if you must) is guarded by another Queen, Boudica of the Iceni and her two daughters (1). The rebellious royals parked their chariot up there a century-and-a-quarter ago and, miraculously, have yet to get a parking ticket.
We begin our journey by heading due north along the river. I still find that bearing surprising. My mental picture of the Thames is that it runs west to east but, of course, it describes a number of sharp curves, which put the Westminster Embankment on a north-south alignment.
Were you to try this walk 200 years ago, then you’d have found yourself in the water. The Embankment is all reclaimed land, constructed by Joseph Bazalgette (with a bit of help) in the mid-19th century. Beneath your feet, the Circle line, a huge interceptor sewer and various service tunnels all compete for space.
This stretch is replete with monuments and features of interest. You’ll pass the lofty RAF memorial, crowned with its distinctive golden eagle before reaching the more recent commemoration to the Battle of Britain (2). It’s a stupendously engaging work by Paul Day (same guy who did the oft-derided ‘lovers’ statue and base in St Pancras). Scenes from the Second World War pop out in such high-relief that you’ll want to run your fingers over them.
It’s not to everyone’s taste. Architectural critic Gavin Stamp objected that the work is “childish and lacking in subtlety”. I respectfully disagree. It’s not as sombre and sober as most war memorials, for sure, but then we have to ask whether it should be. The events of the war are now slipping from living memory. Our younger generations won’t even have ‘grandma’s old stories about the Blitz’ as part of their mental furniture. New memorials should reflect this by provoking interest and curiosity for a generation born many decades after the event, which might then develop into a deeper relationship with wartime sacrifice. This section, for example, shows factory workers building aircraft components:
In just this one panel, those who choose to look will learn that:
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The Battle of Britain was won not just by the brave airmen, but with the support of a whole army of civilian workers
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The factory appears to be inside a tunnel, suggestive of Plessey’s secret subterranean factory
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That factory was housed inside an eastern extension of the Central line, in recently built tunnels that had not yet opened
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That the workforce consists mostly of women
This single vignette opens up all kind of questions and “I’ll have to google that” moments. It’s a memorial that sings with history and memory to help those of us (almost everyone) who never lived through it. It’s precisely the right kind of public memorial for our age. That’s my view, anyway.
Pressing onward, we pass two further riverside sights of note. The first is a ship, the PS Tattershall Castle (3). She’s a boat dear to my heart for two reasons: (i) she’s a floating pub, and I do like pubs. (We will do a Londonist: Time Machine drinks meetup on her decks one day.) (ii) Before coming to the Thames, the Tattershall Castle served as a ferry across the Humber, upon whose banks I grew up. I have a hazy childhood memory of seeing the Tatt’s sister ships steaming out of Barton, before the Humber Bridge opened in 1981 and the ferries were discontinued.
Finally on this stretch, and just before Hungerford Bridge, we reach a year-old piece of reclaimed land. Tyburn Quay (4), as it’s been named, is a brand new bit of embankment, built over the top of one of the access shafts to the Thames supersewer. It’s a pleasant spot to get away from the roar of the road and watch the passing river traffic.
Hungerford Bridge is really three bridges: the central railway bridge, and two slender, white pedestrian crossings known as the Golden Jubilee Footbridges of 2002. Beneath this cluster of spans, you’ll find a bust to top London hero Sir Joseph Bazalgette (1), who oversaw construction of the Embankment and the vital interceptor sewer therein.
Soon after Embankment Pier, we approach Cleopatra’s Needle (2). The Egyptian landmark, a gift rather than imperial loot, was shipped here with considerable difficulty in 1878. It was originally carved around 1450 BC, which means it was already ancient in Cleopatra’s time (it’d be like saying “Queen Elizabeth’s Roman amphitheatre”). You can caveat your way around it, but Cleopatra’s Needle can also be considered the oldest public monument in London.
It carries marks more recent than those chiselled at Heliopolis. In 1917, the first ever air raid on London conducted by planes (rather than Zeppelins), caused blast damage to the obelisk. The scars are most clearly seen on the flanking sphinxes, which have never been repaired (3).
The rest of the walk to Blackfriars is largely free of historical note, though look out for the camel-benches, the ‘mini-TARDIS’ police call box and the old entrance to a tram tunnel beneath Waterloo Bridge. Just as we approach the next span (Blackfriars), we encounter a second and larger section of reclaimed land (4). Termed the Bazalgette Embankment, this new section adds about an acre and a half to the increasingly inaccurately named Square Mile. It was the opening of this walkway, in January 2026, which finally made possible the riverside walk that is the subject of this article. The new embankment has toilets, sculptures, a water feature and (soon) a cafe or two. You can also get close to the great lion-faced mooring hoops, which decorate the original embankment.
A little beyond Blackfriars Bridge, we pass the City of London Boys School, then tuck under the Millennium Bridge. It still looks and feels new, but we should remember that it’s already a quarter of a century old.
Until 2023, the river path took an annoying detour inland not far east of here. Happily, that’s now been remedied, with a short connecting stretch that passes beneath the Samuel Pepys pub. I was there for the ribbon cutting:
They’ve since added a few works of art, and the whole thing is a minor triumph. From here, the path leads out to Queenhithe ((1), below), the only notable invagination of the City’s Thames wall. Queenhithe is probably Roman in origin, serving as a dock for much of its life. This inlet was full of noises a thousand years before Shakespeare brought his creations to the Globe, directly opposite. You might channel Othello as you walk around the three sides of the hithe and “look on the tragic loading of [its] bed”; for its foreshore is strewn with the bones of a thousand long-dead animals (2). As a protected archaeological site, Queenhithe is off-limits to the public and even accredited mudlarkers may not dig here. It retains the detritus of ages; the bones and pipes and potsherds that have been picked clean elsewhere.
On the eastern side of Queenhithe we find two objects that speak of the inlet’s great antiquity. The first is the ‘Alfred Plaque’ (3). This records the resettlement of the old Roman city by King Alfred in 886. The second is a mosaic chronology of the City (4), created between 2011 and 2014 by artists led by Tessa Hunkin. It is superb, both in its artistry and the information it conveys. We learn that Queenhithe was known by the Anglo Saxons as Ethelred’s Hythe. It gained its present name in the 12th century when the duty payments from the dock were funnelled to Queen Matilda, wife of Henry I.
Queenhithe, incidentally, is the part of the walk where you must stray furthest from the Thames. On the north-east corner, a quirk of the architecture pushes the walker about 21 paces away from the river wall. The Thames is in sight the whole time, however.
I have much more to say about Queenhithe, but I’m hoping to do a special feature on this most historic of sites in a future newsletter, so let’s move on for now…
After Queenhithe, the path soon ducks under Southwark Bridge. It’s the furthest you’ll get from the river, and only a few paces at that. Here, you can enjoy a series of information panels about the history of the bridge. Its first incarnation, demolished in the early 20th century, had the longest span of any cast-iron bridge in the world — one of the ‘forgotten wonders of London’ I really must get round to writing about.
After emerging, rejoin the river and stop outside the ‘Little Ship Club’, the City’s only yacht club, which celebrates its centenary this year (2026). Much deeper history lies over the river wall. You’re standing over the spot where, in ancient times, the River Walbrook issued into the Thames. The river was a vital source of fresh water for the early city, and its presence was probably one of the contributory factors that persuaded the Romans to set up camp here in the first place. Its still down there, as a sewer, and its overflow flap can be seen on the foreshore at low tide (1).
Just beyond lies Walbrook Wharf, a waste transfer facility, which packages and haul’s the Square Mile’s rubbish onto barges for disposal downriver. It is the last remaining freight wharf in the City.
The footpath next swings beneath Cannon Street Railway Bridge, with its characteristic smell of swimming pool chlorine from a nearby fitness centre. Look out, too, for the little-known Banksy rat, which can still be descried at the eastern end of the tunnel.
You emerge into an area that was historically known as The Steelyard (2). Between the 13th and 16th centuries, this was the main London base of the Hanseatic League, a north European trading network. The Steelyard behaved as a foreign enclave, with its own rules and duties, and a form of German as the first language. Nothing remains of their buildings or dock, but the Steelyard lives on in the name of an event space.
Our wander soon takes us past Fishmongers’ Hall and thence beneath London Bridge. As you walk through, look up to the bridge’s underside and you’ll note that it consists of four separate concrete arches. Each of these contains two ‘tunnels’, which continue for the entire length of the bridge. It’s possible to clamber through them (3), an unforgettable experience, made possible for me by the City Bridge Foundation. I wrote that adventure up for a previous article.
After London Bridge, the path becomes more crowded with tourists as we approach the ever-magnetic Tower of London and Tower Bridge. You will pass a series of notable buildings. The first one after the bridge is Adelaide House, completed in 1925 and sometimes described as “London’s first skyscraper”, not that anyone would consider it such today. Just beyond, and set back from the river, is the church of St Magnus the Martyr. This Wren church is an article in its own right — take a detour to see its Roman timbers and (inside) a model of the medieval London Bridge, whose approach road passed the church’s doorstep.
A little further on, we reach Old Billingsgate, the former fish market designed by Horace “I also did Tower Bridge” Jones in the 1870s. Billingsgate goes back to medieval times, as London’s premier fish dock and market. The fishy folk cleared off to Docklands in 1982 and today it’s an events venue. Look to the rooftops to see a number of gilded weather vanes shaped like fish (4).
Old Billingsgate is dwarfed by its neighbour. The Custom House was built in the early 19th century as a facility to handle customs duties on goods passing through the Port of London. Like Billingsgate, it maintained its continuity of purpose from earlier buildings on the site, and was still used by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs right up to 2021. The empty building will soon be converted into a 170 bedroom hotel, with a new public plaza alongside the Thames.
That development will erase one of the City’s most annoying/delightful quirks. If you walk along the river at high tide, then the footpath disappears beneath several inches of Thames water. Anyone who wants to pass must either (a) be wearing boots, (b) be prepared for soggy feet, or (c) clamber along the railings like some kind of challenge from the Ninja Warrior TV show.
This unusual spectacle does not really fit in with 21st century health and safety, and I quite understand why, from the developer’s point of view, it has to go. But don’t you think it’s also a bit of a shame? Every one of the people in that photograph got a free adrenaline rush and a story to tell. The new plaza looks like it may still allow high tides to lap the flagstones, but with ample raised ground to allow bypass. So go see the Great Tidal Railing Traverse of London while you still can.
After the water hazard, and past the protruding Sugar Quay Jetty, the Thames Path reaches the purlieus of the Tower. The Tower’s outlying buildings (a gift shop and the wharfinger’s cottage) act as a narrow block on further riverside progress, and we must head inland for the first time. You can, of course, go round and continue by the river into St Katharine Docks. But this point marks the end of an unbroken stretch from Westminster to Tower, which can now be enjoyed entirely by the river for the first time in London’s history.
Thanks for reading! If you know anybody who’s planning a trip to London, who might be interested in this historical walk, please do pass the article on. And let me know (in the comments or by emailing matt@londonist.com) if you do the walk yourself, and what you discover.
Other walks on Londonist: Time Machine:
London’s Roman walls
A time-traveller’s pub crawl
date: 2026-02-11 07:40:00
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