Category archives: Ebb & Flow

Just the other day two visitors approached me in Victoria Tower Gardens, considerately keeping to our Covid social distancing norms, and asked me why the river seemed bereft of water. It was low tide. And it was not the first time that I’ve met people unaware that the river is tidal up as far as […]

As the changing of the clocks last weekend marks a deeper descent into early evening winter darkness, some Twitter friends have kindly agreed to share their pictures of the Thames at night. So please escape today’s anxieties for a while and stroll along with them to see the river through their eyes. Based in Kingston […]

There is no doubt that there has been a marked renewal of marine life in the river since the dark days of 1957 when the Natural History Museum declared the Thames to be “biologically dead”. The London Natural History Society says that now “the Tidal Thames supports 120 species of fish and that over 60 […]

The planned grand opening of Westminster Bridge by Queen Victoria had to be abandoned as she was in mourning for her husband, Prince Albert, who had died five months earlier on December 14, 1861. Instead it was officially opened, though quietly, at four o’clock in the morning on May 24, 1862, the day and hour […]

If a flash of red cuts across your sightline brightening up the river as you walk along the Thames Path National Trail in central London, you are most likely catching sight of a Thames Rocket, one of the three tourist Rib companies that ply for custom on the waters of the central London tidal Thames. […]