Xmas every night on York's Millennium Bridge

The festive lights get switched on this Thursday evening in York - but it's Christmas every night on the splendid Millennium Bridge, over the Ouse on the southern edge of the city centre.

The peds'n'bikes-only bridge is lit up at dusk in gradually shifting colours.

It's quite a romantic place to stop and enjoy, say, a knock-down trifle from the supermarket over the road.


It's constantly busy with cyclists (and, being York, you only have to wait a few minutes for a tandem) and dog walkers.

When a white dog passes, the lights make them glow trippily in green, pink, turquoise and lemon. Our Sainsburys trifle looked pretty psychedelic, too.

Duck special: Low headroom in Lee Valley

Is this the lowest-headroom cycle bridge in Britain? It's on National Cycle Route 1 following the Lee Valley north, in Walthamstow marshes.

The cycle path ducks under a railway bridge at Coppermill Lane and leaves you just five feet of headroom, or 152cm - that's about the minimum required width for a cycle lane.

(The minimum required headroom for underpasses according to TA90/05 appears to be 2.4m, or an inch or two under eight feet.)

This young lady has obviously had practice.

Saint and supermodel: St Magnus's London Bridge

Because we were on bikes, and we were in the area, and we could, we nipped in to the church of St Magnus the Martyr, by the north end of London Bridge on Lower Thames Street yesterday, as suggested by Nigel's comment on the recent post Quirky London 9 of 20: London Bridge (rems of).


Its enormous scale model of London Bridge circa 1400 shows that traffic congestion is nothing new. The model has over 900 figures and animals on it; no cattle on today's bridge, and hence no flying poo to dodge, though the odd loquacious taxi driver does their best to provide a metaphorical substitute.

Top tip: the church has a book sale, with a big range of quality, brand-new titles on sale for a quid. Review copies perhaps? Anyway, well worth a look.


The church is open during weekday office hours. On display outside is this remnant of Roman London: a jetty post from Londinium of two millennia ago. They know it was Roman because the sign on it saying NO CYCLING was in Latin.

Grout and about: Norwood's bike mosaic

Cycled past this mosaic the other day. It's under the railway bridge by the station in South Norwood. I'm not quite sure what cycle routes it might be celebrating. All I could find was a muddy bridleway across South Norwood park.


And it's not Ravenna. But it could be worse. At least a cartoon bike is better than the unconvincing portraits of famous locals in the Elephant and Castle's notorious subways (or, as the locals fondly call them, 'public toilets'). One, for example, seems to sport a trademark bowler hat, tramp outfit and moustache. I think it's Charles Babbage. Or maybe Florence Nightingale.

Bridge partners: Little and Large

On 3 October, the world’s longest pedestrian-and-cyclists-only bridge (as it’s claimed) will open sixty or so miles north from New York City. The Poughkeepsie Highland Railroad Bridge (right) is a century-old goods-train line that crosses the Hudson River. It closed in the 1970s, but has been restored with privately raised money. The 2km-long crossing will join up cycle trails on either side, and promises one of the world’s most adrenalin-making pedalled experiences. Especially when you get halfway across 65m above the water and realise how rusty it looks.

Not as good as the Humber Bridge, which I’m always banging on about, obviously. But still one to add to my ‘future projects’ folder, perhaps in conjunction with a ride along NYC’s Manhattan Greenway as part of an ambitious US-based cycle trip. One which I’ll never do and will end up going to Belgium for a camping weekend instead, and it’ll rain.


But I did manage another quirky, historic, restored bridge yesterday, one that’s effectively only open to pedestrians and cyclists. (Cars can in theory use it, except there’s no road on the other side, only a dirt track.)

Horkstow Bridge (other pics), just 20 minutes’ bike ride south into Lincolnshire from the Humber Bridge, is one of Britain’s oldest surviving suspension bridges, dating from 1836. It's also John Rennie’s only suspension bridge, and without doubt the world’s most elegant bridge built solely to transport bricks across a canal. Men of punier aesthetic ambitions than Rennie would have just thrown them over.


Much of Horkstow Bridge’s charm is because it’s on the end of a remote country lane in a back-of-the-sofa part of England, on the end of a cul-de-sac. Which is an odd place for a bridge. A kind of pocket-sized Clifton Suspension Bridge, it’s only 133 feet long, 14 feet wide and 36 feet above the river, so the Hudson’s monster (6,700 feet long, 35 feet wide, 212 feet above the water) does rather dwarf it.

But as yet another little-England curio, best visited by bike (too far and boring to walk, too trivial to drive, but just right as a bike trip from the Humber Bridge) it’s rather fun. And you don't have to worry about pronouncing 'Poughkeepsie'.

Thames Crossings home page up

I've put up a home page for the Thames Crossings series that's just finished on this blog on the website for my book, www.bike99.com.

The home page summarises all 33 ways you can cross the tidal Thames with a bike, from Teddington to Tilbury via central London - a fabulous little two-day trip of 20 miles/four hours' leisurely cycling each day.

There's also a Google map to help place them all.

Thames Crossings 31 and 32: Dartford Crossing

Downriver from Woolwich Foot Tunnel, rather a long way, is Dartford Crossing. It consists of a tunnel, effectively the northbound crossing of the M25; and a bridge, the southbound. You bike it either way by turning up at the Crossing Control and getting a free lift across in a Range Rover painted like a poisonous insect. The exciting process is covered in detail in a recent post.


It's a mile or two from Dartford town centre. You'll have to find it by the traditional cycle-touring method: misread a map, ask people who don't know, and stumble on it by chance going the other way to what you thought.


The tunnel was started in 1938, opened in 1963, doubled to two tunnels in 1981, and finally augmented with a bridge - the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge - in 1991. Cycle paths connect the northside Crossing Control with civilisation, and Essex, but there isn't much to do so you'll probably come back over the bridge quite swiftly and return to the south side.


Retrace your steps to Dartford town centre and take a grateful train home. This is a good place to end of the Thames Tidal Crossing bike trip: 32 cycle traverses between Teddington and Dartford by bridge, tunnel and ferry, staying alongside the river virtually all the way, most of it traffic-free. The whole thing is a lovely way to explore London, and makes a great two-day trip, split somewhere in the very centre around Westminster Bridge.


If you're up to collect the entire set, there's one final estuary crossing. From Dartford town centre it's 8-10 miles along National Cycle Route 1 (not alongside the river, though) to the Tilbury-Gravesend ferry.

Thames Crossings 25: Tower Bridge

Downriver from London Bridge is Tower Bridge. The most recognisable and celebrated of Thames crossings was opened in 1894. It's a must-cycle experience. The busy traffic hems you in a bit on the bridge itself, with some unpleasant ridges right on your cycling line and railings by your side, but the speed limit is 20mph, which just about makes it enjoyable. The most dramatic approach is from the south, where the angle of the road combined with the bridge's series of vault-like arches gives the impression you're cycling into the oesophagus of some fabulous sea-monster.


Watching its roadway split and lift to allow river traffic to pass underneath, which it does around twenty times a week, is dramatic too. Lift times are on the Tower Bridge website; lifts are also catalogued on the bridge's own Twitter feed, like a perkily repetitive primary school teacher you get off with at a party to your swift regret.

Just to the north is the Bloody Tower, which gave the bridge its name. (The fact that the selected design happened to be two towers was coincidental.) In fact, if you're stuck in a car while the bridge is up, as Bill Clinton's motorcade famously was in 1997, you'll probably call it Bloody Tower Bridge.

The view from the walkways at the top of Tower Bridge is described as 'stunning' on the bridge website, though that also describe the bridge's forthcoming maintenance works programme as 'exciting'.


You can tell locals from tourists because locals would never pay the extortionate entrance fee to visit the Tower or to go along the walkways at the top of Tower Bridge. You can tell Yorkshire-born incomers from locals because they will find a way to do them for free. And then won't tell you what it is.

Tower Bridge is undergoing major maintenance work over 2009-2010 and will be closed for several periods. There's talk of a ferry replacement but don't count on it. Your only alternative if it's closed is the hike back to London Bridge.

From here along the north side is a complicated but very enjoyable and all traffic-free amble through docks and alongside ornamental canal, including Britain's bendiest bike path. Along the south side is another complicated but largely traffic-free run, mostly along the picturesque and chain-restaurant riverfront, and at one point apparently going through someone's back door. I've knocked up a Google map of both routes between Tower Bridge and Greenwich (to get to Rotherhithe Tunnel, come off the marked route at Elephant Lane). Either way, it's a mile and a bit to Rotherhithe Tunnel.

Thames Crossings 24: London Bridge

Downriver from Southwark Bridge is London Bridge. Often confused with Tower Bridge, it is actually central London's most characterless crossing: a gum-chewing, slack-jawed, adolescent concrete shrug that links Southwark Cathedral on the south bank with Monument on the north. It's a fast, wide road - the A3, in fact - without much to recommend it, except for a fine views downriver of Tower Bridge, especially under evening sun.

It dates only from 1973, and is the latest in a line of constructions on the site. Medieval London Bridge lasted 600 years. To the delight of tourists and locals alike, it featured shops, houses, and a regular display of severed traitors' heads.


Its 19th-century replacement, designed by Rennie, proved inadequate for the weight and volume of traffic. It was sold to a US entrepreneur in 1968 (he didn't think it was Tower Bridge, as an urban myth claims) and now graces an artificial lake in Arizona.

From here you can go right along the riverfront on both north and south sides. North access is past Monument and down Fish St Hill, from where it's stepless (and technically a footpath, so use good judgement) all the way to Tower itself. South access is left along the main road and left up Hays Lane to join the riverside path (again a footpath, again good judgement) past The Scoop (which often has free outdoor entertainment) and the ovoid City Hall. Either way, Tower Bridge is about half a mile away.

Thames Crossings 23: Southwark Bridge

Downriver from the Millennium Bridge is Southwark Bridge. Dating from 1921, it's the least-used bridge in central London, because there's no straight-on access to the city for motor traffic at its north end. However, bikes can slice straight through a series of bike/ped crossings along Queen St as far as the Guildhall.


The bridge also has a wide separated cycle lane on each carriageway, making it a pleasant bike crossing.

In Fruiterer's Passage, the riverside pedestrian alleyway that ducks underneath the bridge on the north side, there are some tiled murals (below right). They depict the bridge as it used be, as seen from a building site which due to health and safety was evidently a top-hat area.


From here it's all Dickensian alleys and wharves along either bank, underneath and past Cannon St railway bridge. The north bank is narrow walkways with access alleys taking you up to street level. The south bank is more touristed, twisting and cobbled, taking you past Vinopolis, the Clink (which gave its name to the traditional sound made by toasting glasses), and the Golden Hinde (a replica of the ship that Sir Francis Drake used to take bowls to the world in exchange for tobacco, potatoes and slavery); if you want to avoid steep steps to access London Bridge you have to go round the far side of Southwark Cathedral. Either way, London Bridge is under half a mile away.

Thames Crossings 22: Millennium Bridge

Downriver from Blackfriars Bridge is Millennium Bridge, aka the Wobbly Bridge.

It opened in June 2000 but turned out to be more of a cakewalk than a crossing: at the south end it was wobbling at 0.8Hz and in the middle at 1Hz. (Those with perfect pitch will recognise these as A flat and C, eight octaves below middle C).

The idea had been to provide a stylish link between Tate Modern and St Paul's Cathedral, not a fairground ride, so it was closed two days later. Spoilsport engineering work added dampers, and it reopened in 2002 vibration-free.


It's a pedestrian bridge, but fine for wheeling your bike across. (Though you can't easily lean your bike against the recessed strands of steel at the side.) And it was designed with views in mind: not only upriver and downriver, but along the bridge itself, especially as you walk up to it from Tate Modern, where it frames the dome of St Paul's very satisfyingly.

The best views of the bridge itself are from the bar up on level 7 of Tate Modern. Coming up here for a glass of wine at dusk ought to be in those books with titles like '1000 Things To Do Before You Start Forgetting Which You've Done'.


The north side takes you straight up to St Paul's. But if you want to go down to water level to walk along the riverside path, there's an inclinator: a curious little machine that's half lift, half cable car, and half shower cubicle, which will scoot you and bike up and down to avoid the steps.

From here on the north side it's a bit winding: down the inclinator, along the walkway, left up Broken Wharf, along High Timber St, right down Queenhithe to the walkway, through Fruiterer's Passage underneath Southwark Bridge, and left up Bell Wharf Lane to get back to road level. On the south side it's along the riverfront, right just after the Globe and back on yourself to street level. Either way, Southwark Bridge is under quarter of a mile away.

Thames Crossings 21: Blackfriars Bridge

Downriver from Waterloo Bridge is Blackfriars Bridge. It dates from 1869 (it's been widened since) and doesn't quite offer the views that Waterloo Bridge does. (Though the view of Blackfriars from Waterloo Bridge (right) can be sensational.)


However, on its downriver side there's the very odd sight of several huge pillars sticking up out the water, like plinths for some as yet undecided statues. They're the supports for the old Blackfriars Railway Bridge, which was removed in 1985. There's a railway bridge in use just beyond them.

Blackfriars is a fast road bridge that used to have a good wide mandatory cycle lane, but it's been chopped down for recent roadworks and is now a lethal funnel at the north end. To me the bridge is OK but a bit boring and dutiful, like a Bank Holiday drink with your cousin's husband.


From here on the north side it's messy, fast, unpleasant Thames St, unless you can get your bike down on to the riverside footpath just upstream of Blackfriars. On the south side join the promenade via the obvious-looking down-and-bank of Southwark St and Hopton St; you have a splendid riverside cycle and the cityscape view from the pub, the Founder's Arms, is something special. It's even better from the bar up at the top of Tate Modern, a fabulous place for a not-expensive drink at dusk with its sweeping waterside views. Either way, the Millennium Bridge is about a quarter of a mile away.

Thames Crossings 20: Waterloo Bridge

Downstream from the Hungerford/Jubilee Bridges amalgam is Waterloo Bridge. It opened fully in 1945 and was designed by Giles Gilbert Scott, the man behind our most iconic public toilets: those red kiosks that also contain landline phones.

The bridge stands on the top of an S-bend in the Thames which in a thousand years will be an oxbow lake, if it doesn't get submerged by melting icecaps first. It's frequently said to have been built by women, often in a tone of voice that implies it's your fault.


At rush hour it's chocker with cyclists of all types bombing across - dreadlocked couriers, clothespegs in lycra on road bikes, business suits on Bromptons, women in boots on sit-up-and-begs with baskets, scruffy and haggard cycling bloggers - but this is a bridge to stop and savour.

Not for the bridge itself. It has the sinuous beauty of a tin of spam and is the colour of February drizzle. But for the views. For this has the best sightseeing from any crossing in London, even any street-level viewpoint.


Upriver is a sweeping panorama, from left to right offering you the South Bank, the Eye, Jubilee Bridges, the Houses of Parliament, and the Savoy Hotel. Downriver is Somerset House, St Paul's, the Gherkin, the towers of Canary Wharf, the Oxo Tower, and the South Bank again.

By day it's thrilling; by night it's magical. And a bike, which lets you stop and snap, is the best way to enjoy it.


Critical Mass starts off from just underneath the bridge's south end, by the waterside; rides run from 7pm or so on the last Friday of every month.

There's an outdoor book market there all year in which you're more likely to find Kazuo Ishiguro than Jackie Collins, and during summer the area in front of the National Theatre has daily free outdoor entertainment, Watch This Space, on an astroturfed piazza – fabulous for picnics and meets with friends.


Most of the South Bank's foyers are open all the time, often with free entertainment and always with bars and eating opportunities. There are lots of restaurants and shops too. By night this can also be a magical place, in the sense that it'll make your money disappear.

From here on the north bank it's along busy Embankment; you can side-step some of it on a side-road, and perhaps explore quiet Oxbridge-college-like Middle Temple as you do. On the south side you can ride half the way and push the rest along the promenade; just past the Oxo Tower turn right then left to escape the underpass. Either way it's under half a mile to Blackfriars Bridge.

Thames Crossings 18 and 19: Jubilee Bridges

Downriver from Westminster Bridge is something that could count as one, two or three bridges: Hungerford Bridge. Or, if you're pushing your bike on one of its two pedestrian paths on either side of the railway crossing in the middle, the Jubilee Bridge. Or if you're on the other side, the other Jubilee Bridge.


The Jubilee Bridges were opened in 2002, replacing a shabby old walkway that was possibly England's longest urinal. In the mid-1800s, there was briefly a rather splendid suspension bridge here designed by Hatman himself, Isambard Kingdom Brunel; when it was replaced by a train bridge, its chains were reused in Clifton Suspension Bridge. Brunel fan Jeremy Clarkson will approve of such recycling we're sure.

The Jubilees are fun and photogenic to cross. It feels like you're walking along the x-axis of a computer-generated graph, which you probably are.

On the upstream side you have views of the Houses of Parliament and the Eye; at dusk it's a stirring sight, seeing the pods pop with tourist flashes that have little chance of illuminating the opposite riverbank. There are also several street entertainers painted in silver pretending to be automata, an exercise of mystifying commercial success. On the downstream side there's the bustling South Bank.


There are lifts big enough for a couple of bikes (as well as steep stairs) at both ends of the upstream Jubilee Bridge and the south end of the downstream one. So don't shell out £17 for a 'flight' on the Eye: just take the lift up here for that claustrophic-pod feel, and enjoy the views from the bridge instead.

The only access challenge for bikes is at the north end of the downstream bridge. If you don't want to use the steep stairs down to Embankment station, you can get smoothly between the bridge and Charing Cross station concourse, which is on Strand street level, via a narrow concrete walkway at the far left corner of the concourse.


On the north bank from here it's fast and busy Embankment, then up Savoy Hill to Strand. You might cycle swiftly up and down adjacent Savoy Court, sort-of the only place in Britain where you have to cycle on the wrong side of the road.

On the south bank it's a gentle ride along the promenade, accessing Waterloo Bridge by its downriver side up a contraflow cycle lane. Either way, Waterloo Bridge is under half a mile.

Thames Crossings 17: Westminster Bridge

Downriver from Lambeth Bridge is Westminster Bridge. Looking downstream you have the Eye right on the bend of the river, perhaps with the bridge's fancy triple-headed street lights in the foreground.

Looking north up the bridge you have one of the iconic views of London: the Houses of Parliament and the Clock Tower being snapped by a thousand tourist mobiles.

They tend to do that comedy backwards shuffle into the road so that their partner can get them and the Clock Tower in, so watch out. At least if there's an accident the photo will show exactly what time it occurred.


Normally I'm all for stopping on bridges and enjoying the view, but be aware that as a cyclist you're just an information point on wheels for many a visitor, so watch out here. Escuse pliz, ware Backeenam Palass? Tett Modarn has eet much far? Why plisman arrest me for take peechar tren steshan like Staleen Rassia?


In rush hour this is a busy crossing for cyclists, luminous with hi-vis commuters heading north. With luck there'll be yet another demonstration in Parliament Square protesting that something somewhere should stop. The only thing they do succeed in stopping is the motor traffic, in which case us cyclists have the bridge to ourselves.


Dating from 1862, it's the oldest bridge in this stretch of the Thames. From the side it looks the same sort of steel-arch affair as Lambeth Bridge, though painted a different colour. The previous structure here was immortalised by William Wordsworth on 3 Sep 1802 in his poem 'On Westminster Bridge', claiming 'Earth has not anything to show more fair'.

Not even an Islington estate agent would go that far. However, recent scholarship has established that, according to the original manuscript, he in fact wrote 'Erith has not anything to show more fair'.

From here on the north bank it's along busy Embankment; on the south bank it's a push along the crowded promenade past some visitor attractions and the London Eye. Either way, the Jubilee Bridges are about half a mile away.

Thames Crossings 16: Lambeth Bridge

Downriver from Vauxhall Bridge is Lambeth Bridge, dating from 1932.


It was built by Dorman Long, the Yorkshire company that made both the Tyne Bridge and Sydney Harbour Bridge. A plaque on the stonework by the roundabout on the south side of the bridge reminds you of its provenance: CONSTRUCTED BY DORMAN LONG & CO 1929-1932, YOU SOFT SOUTHERN JESSIES.


And the view from here is just as sensational as that from the coathangers of Newcastle of Sydney: the Palace of Westminster basking grandly in the sun by the waterside like, er, a large reptile.


Lambeth Bridge has mandatory bike lanes painted on either side which are five yards across. But because of an optical illusion they only appear nine inches wide, making this a rather unpleasant bridge to cross, despite its brevity.

There is a man employed to drive a white van endlessly across the bridge, looping round the roundabouts at either end all day. His job is to swish past to you as close as he can. He files reports back to base constantly on his mobile. So unless you're in a hurry, get off and walk and enjoy the views. Except of course if you're in London you're always in a hurry.


Just by the south side of the bridge is Lambeth Palace, the best-preserved Tudor building you can see from a road in London (right). When the Tour de France started off in London - a great incentive to ride away as fast as possible - they put up these amusing topiary figures of giant shrub-men riding bikes on the roundabout here.

Slicing across the roundabout there is a miniature rift valley of a bike lane that exemplifies the best in British cycle lane design. Unfortunately.

From here on the north side you go along Millbank, past a park and in front of the Houses of Parliament, and right around the tedious traffic flow of Parliament Square (near which there is Europe's safest pedestrian crossing, though you'd never realise it). On the south side you can ride the promenade for a photo-opportunity in front of the Houses of Parliament and Big Ben, which of course you can't see because it's the bell inside what's officially called the Clock Tower. Either way, Westminster Bridge is about half a mile away.

Thames Crossings 15: Vauxhall Bridge

Downriver from Chelsea Bridge is the 1906 steel-arch structure of Vauxhall Bridge. Cross over the wide, fast cement savannah and you might think it's central London's most boring crossing.


But of course you're on a bike, not in a car or on a bus, so you can stop to look over the side. If you do, you'll see all sorts of quirky stuff.

And we don't just mean the Pink Floyd view of Battersea Power Station's dead sheep to the west, Tate Britain on the north bank, the Eye and other postcard-London goodies downriver, or the Stalinist-cake architecture of the SIS (aka MI5, MI6) building at the south end (right).

No. We're talking about the eight large female figures depicting the arts and sciences that adorn the upstream and downstream sides of the bridge. They're all flowing art-nouveauish graces that could be advertising a safety bicycle in a 1900s-Paris poster by Mucha.


One, for example, holds a palette and a little sculpture of a person (above right, who may be holding an even littler sculpture of a person, etc, in a Borges-style recursion).

But the best one is Miss Architecture 1906, who holds a model of St Paul's Cathedral (right). There must be some sort of pub-quiz-question you can ask here, such as, 'From which bridge can you photograph both the MI6 building and St Paul's Cathedral?', or, 'Why are you arresting me, officer?'.

From here it's busy dual-carriageway Millbank (past Tate Britain) on the north side, or a riverside promenade (past the SIS building, from where security monkeys will have binoculars trained on you) on the south side; access it via the upriver side of the bridge. Now we're getting into serious tourist-view territory. Lambeth Bridge is about half a mile away.