Thames Path

Waterloo → Woolwich

Distance: 14.56 miles
Ascent: 60 metres
Duration: 4 hours 35 minutes

Goats
« Not walked | Not walked »

Today's soggier than yesterday, but there's been so much to see.

The hits kept coming: the new City skyline momentarily lost in low cloud; an abundance of public art (favourite: the sign pointing the 24,589 mile way back to itself by circumnavigating the globe via the North and South Poles); renovated wharves; tales of local heroes; the ghoulish gateposts and Grinling Gibbons "Valley of Dry Bones" reredos at St Nicholas, Deptford; Greenwich with the Cutty Sark, Painted Gallery and Time Ball (we were just in time for the one o'clock drop).

The most unusual sight was the tiny farm at Surrey Docks, where inquisitive goats climbed the fence for a better look while pigs, sheep and cattle sat idly by.

In an unusual move we ate lunch out — the Millennium Dome provides plenty of choice just a short distance from the finish line — and topped the meal off with freshly caught whelks from a barrow on the road in New Charlton.

All of a sudden the great Thames Barrier was upon us and the end of another National Trail: my sixth and Emma's fourth. I don't know why it ends here. Indeed, there's a signpost directing walkers on towards Crayford Ness on the Thames Path Extension and it's tempting to just keep going. But where would that lead? A circuit of our island, perhaps?