London Cruise - Medway to Central London

Travelling into London by boat, it's best to catch the tide. That's contrary to travelling in by train, when it's much better to go 'against the flow', you might even get a seat.

With a boat doing 6 knots and the tide doing 2, the difference is that you either travel at 4 knots against it, or 8 with it. That halves the time to go up river. Which is why, after arriving in the Medway at 8pm the night before, we were up and away at 7am, waking to a beautiful morning with the tide way out and the mudflats of the creek outlining the twists and turns of the anchorage.


We cut through the Swatchway (Magic of the Swatchways?) inside the wreck of the Richard Montgomery, a 1944 liberty ship that sank carrying a cargo of explosives. They salvaged some, but 1400 tonnes remains on board the wreck, which is well bouyed and monitored with an exclusion zone, for obvious reasons.

From there it was a simple motoring trip up the river, following the twists and turns and enjoying the way the landscape unfolded with each bend in the channel. The Thames gets increasingly industrial as you travel west, but with interesting breaks of open space and marshland. travelling so slowly gives you time to watch, question and ponder in a way that you rarely do on a car journey, although the traffic on the M25 Dartford Crossing seemed to be going at about the same speed.


Closer to the city, and the sights become more familiar. The Thames Barrier, the Millenium Dome, the David Beckham Acadamy (!), Greenwich and the Cutty Sark and finally Canary Wharf tower and all the modern building of Docklands, where riverside flats now line the river to the almost complete exclusion of anything else bar the occasional old pub still standing resolutely in it's little row of terraced houses.

We received a warm welcome at Limehouse Marina, and found just how much easier it is to get into a marina berth with no tide and almost no wind. Max and Issie were delighted to find that not only had we stopped, but we had stopped within a few hundred metres of the Docklands Light Railway, and directly under the landing path for London City Airport. Shouts of ‘train’ and ‘airplane’ came thick and fast. As the sun set we cooked our dinner and reflected on an enjoyable trip up river.