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The South Bank
Beyond Westminster Bridge is the tourist friendly South Bank. Once home to Ken Livingstone's GLC, County Hall now houses Dali Universe, Europe's largest collection of work by the Spanish surrealist, and the London Aquarium which boasts million-litre tanks and come-and-watch shark-feeding sessions.
Hit Jubilee Gardens though and everyone is gazing at one thing - the London Eye. The 135m-high wheel took seven years to construct and weighs 1,600 tonnes.
The Royal Festival Hall, the only construction still remaining from 1951's Festival of Britain is part of the imposing South Bank arts complex which also comprises the Hayward Gallery, National Theatre and National Film Theatre. Painted some 40 times by Monet, Waterloo Bridge was demolished in 1936 and subsequently rebuilt; the view inspired Ray Davies’ Kinks hits “Waterloo Sunset”.
With its huge leafy trees, street performers and outdoor exhibition of banners designed by school-children and artists, this is a popular place for a stroll. Pass ITV's London Television Centre and you'll arrive at Gabriel's Wharf, a hub of cafes and craft stalls. A little further along, the Oxo Tower Wharf showcases modern art and design talent.
Blackfriars Bridge marks the place where criminals used to board ships to be transported to Virginia. Originally named William Pitt Bridge, it was renamed Blackfriars after the nearby monastery.
Beaches – Every Summer since 1992 Paris has opened the Paris Plage, a manmade beach along the Seine. The idea has been copied in Berlin, Budapest and Milan but where’s London’s beach? Well, for a start there’s a stretch of sand and pebbles in front of the Royal Festival Hall on the South Bank. It’s the venue for unofficial parties hosted by the group Reclaim the Beach. Events range from daytime paddling and sand-castle building to late-night dance parties with generator-powered sound systems.
And in fact, London has hundreds of metres of real beach all along the Thames exposed for several hours each day at low tide. The widest sections are at the Tower of London, Festival Pier, the Oxo Tower, Hammersmith and Greenwich. Most of it is shingle and mud but for forty years last century London had a sandy beach right next to Tower Bridge. It’s now closed, apart from a few days a year, but Londoners continue to use the foreshore, and there is a growing movement to clean up and re-open the Thames Beach for the use of all.
Although the Thames is one of the world’s cleanest urban rivers, at least 1,000 tonnes of rubbish is removed from the tidal stretch every year. The pressure group Thames21 organize around 50 riverside clean-ups a year, most recently at Poplar, Barnes and Battersea, and encourages community groups and businesses to adopt stretches of the shore.
In April, the Savoy adopted the stretch of foreshore in front of the hotel and is now working with Thames21 to keep it clean.
On the opposite bank, sections of the foreshore between the British Airways London Eye and Tower Bridge will be open during the Mayor’s Thames Festival. There’ll be lots of fun activities and Thames21 will be on hand to inform the public about the foreshore and organize a clean-up. Last year almost 500,000 people attended the festival and 30,000 participated in performance and events.
