Saturday, August 30, 2008

The missing bit of the Thames Path...

The other day I wanted to take myself down to the Firepower Museum at Woolwich. It was quite a nice day so I decided to walk along the river to get there, I had the idea of following the Thames Path in my head.

Now you may know this but I was surprised to find out that the Thames Path has a missing bit. I took myself down to the Thames Barrier but you can only get along the river as far the visitors centre.

After that, and somewhat confused, I backtracked to Woolwich Road. There I discovered signs for the Thames Path "Intermediate Stretch" (or something like that). They take you off Woolwich Road at Roston Road and then back to the River. Looking at Streetmap.co.uk you can see that there is indeed a missing stretch between the Thames Barrier and the Leisure Centre by the Woolwich Ferry.

For those who are interested below is the route that I took:
I got from Harlinger Street to the river by walking under an archway in the middle of the block of flats that appears in front of you. I believe that this is technically private land, but I was good, I promise.

I'll post some more stuff up later about both Firepower and the Greenwich Heritage Centre but in the meantime I took some photos as I went along, it was really quite nice.A boat that was seemingly very low in the water, odd...

Canons! There was information in the heritage centre about how there was a fear that the Dutch would sail up the Thames as far as Woolwich and therefore the area was fortified. The cannons seem to be on loan from somewhere but I wonder if this is an original emplacement.

A sadly tired looking mosaic about the Thames Path.

Looking back towards London.

A cluster of metal statues outside Firepower.

More of the statues...

Odd set of blocks between Firepower and the river. I wonder if this was the old waterfront?

The Woolwich Ferry has a bed to go to sleep in :) I guess this makes a lot of sense, they can keep the spares out of the way by the river bank without it sinking into the mud. Still I did quite like the idea of it having it's own little cat bed type thing to retreat to.

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