Thames Crossings 28a: Emirates Air Line

I was in London yesterday, investigating the new addition to my 2009 Bike Crossings of the Thames series.

Because on 28 June 2012, this new bike-capable river-hop opened between Greenwich Foot Tunnel and Woolwich Ferry.

The new option is the oddly named Emirates Air Line (picture). It’s a cable car service from north Greenwich (the O2, on the south bank) to Victoria Dock (near London City Airport, on the north bank). And not something to pump up your tyres with.

It styles itself as a ‘flight’ in the same irritatingly gimmicky way as the London Eye, and all the (very pleasant and helpful) staff wear airline-style uniforms.

Which is enough to make you reach for the sick bag. Except they don’t supply any, which proves it isn’t really a flight at all.

At least they don’t charge you £6 booking fee or demand £8 per carry-on bag, either.

Now, crossings are not cheap: £4.30 single, or £3.20 if you have an Oyster card.

But it TAKES BIKES! FREE! (picture) Hooray!

Views during the five-minute crossing are stunning. Unless (picture) you go during a period of relentless drizzle and rain, or to give it its technical name, ‘2012’.

The stations – which are just like underground stations, with Oyster touch-ins, no toilets, and so on – have normal ticket gates, wide enough for bikes, and provide lifts encouragingly marked with a bike symbol to take you and machine up to or down from the boarding area (picture).

There are also several bike racks outside the southern, O2, station (picture), if you’ve come to do a return trip, or perhaps just spectate and head on along the nice traffic-free cycle path on the south side past the Thames Barrier to Woolwich.

So, the new Air Line is bike-friendly, and joins the canon of Thames Bike Crossings. Probably not enough room in the cars for more than one bike, or tandems or trailers or recumbents, but otherwise you should be OK.

From here it's only a couple of miles to the Woolwich Ferry.

UPDATE 17 October 2012

More pics here, from a recent journey done with a group of cyclists.

Numbers are not a problem, and staff are bike-friendly, helping you into the cabins with your bike.

Inside the cabins, the seats tip up to make space for one or two bikes.

Plane speaking: Bike to London City Airport

Cycling to visit an airport is usually about as enticing a prospect as dental work with a hangover, but London City Airport is an exception. It's only a few miles from Tower Bridge, and a pleasant run: you can go alongside the Ornamental and Thames much of the way, then through Canary Wharf and over the Lea bridge.

The airport is next to Victoria Dock, a cityscape built by robots for an offworld colony. With ExCel, a strange almost-transporter bridge, clean-cut alien buildings and a curious hidden beach, it offers a city-of-the-future vision from a 1960s boys' annual.

At its eastern end you cross an all-metal footbridge and duck under planes (above right). They abseil down and belay their way up the sky at unusually steep angles, thanks to the cramped runway.


You can park your bike almost opposite the terminal entrance, under cover of the concrete aqueduct that carries the DLR. The modest racks almost give you enough space to lock your bike comfortably, and look more patronised by staff than by citybreakers.

If you're travelling light and flying from London City Airport, bike is a fine way to get there - not that you'd know it from their website. Still, the bike sign is pleasingly Netherlandish.


We didn't actually go in the terminal on our visit yesterday - the coffee costs more than most Ryanair flights - but there's an excellent cafe nearby. Just to the west of here, across the main road, is Thames Barrier Park (right) which has a stylish, inexpensive cafe and coffee shop in the pavilion by the lawns.

So for a budget citybreak, cycle out to the airport, then turn back and stay in London. All the buzz of the airport, the cheapness of a staycation, and the excitement of finding your way round where nobody speaks English.

Cycle clip: Bike racks on a fast ferry

Some of London's most thrillingly situated bike racks are here, on the Thames Clippers fast ferries. They're commuter services, but take bikes (though we've never seen any, apart from ours).

For sightseers, the £12 rover tickets give you unlimited travel on the Clippers all day after 10am, from O2 in the east to Millbank in the west.

Both the O2 and Tate Britain have some of the free ping pong tables set around London this summer - they'll be taken down after this weekend, so hurry.)

Talking of hurrying, the best bits are east of Tower Bridge, where the boat bombs along like Donald Campbell in Bluebird just before closing time. If you do put your bike in the racks, it might be an idea to lock them, just in case.

Keep an Eye on this: Call to ban bikes from South Bank

At the moment, you can cycle along the side of the Thames for its most picture-postcard stretch, past its most iconic sights and bridges: from Vauxhall, past the Houses of Parliament, right underneath the Eye, under the Jubilee Bridge, past the Royal Festival Hall, under Waterloo Bridge with its bookstalls, by the National Theatre with the free summer Watch This Space events, and along the grand spacious riverside boulevard to the Oxo Tower.

You're not really supposed to, but in practice you're allowed, as Kennington People on Bikes entertainingly reported yesterday with comprehensive illustrations.

It's one of the world's great big-city cycling trundles, and ideal on the new Hire Bikes. It's that riverside bit in the picture here.

But the debate over whether it should be allowed it all (and it seems 'tolerated' at the moment rather than being 'legal') has been grumbling along for years. And as SE1 reports, the latest draft strategy to 'develop' cycling suggests it should be forbidden between the Eye and the Oxo. Both support and opposition is vehement and about 50-50.


Opponents say the alternative inland route along Belvedere Road (right) is much safer and more convenient.

Many people (including lots on Lambeth council, who control the Vauxhall-Westminster stretch) want to allow cycling, but have it lightly policed on a 'reasonable behaviour' basis. That seems the most sensible solution to us, preserving comfort for pedestrians but also access for sensible cyclists.

Or we could cordon off territories either side of a Peace Wall like they did in Belfast, one side for pedestrians and the other for terr- er, cyclists, and put up loads of bold murals. That could become a tourist attraction in its own right.


Anyway, today's picture of a cycle hire docking station is the one on Belvedere Road, where you'll have to cycle if the ban eventually goes ahead. The ones round here are usually full in the evening - not ideal if you're looking to dock your hire bike and you're late for your event.

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 33: Tilbury-Gravesend Ferry

Downriver from the Dartford Crossing is the final traverse of the Thames before the sea: the Tilbury-Gravesend Ferry. It runs every half hour. Singles are £2.70, returns £4.10, and bikes go free.

Getting here is a bit of a journey, but you have a choice of banks. On the south bank you can follow National Cycle Route 1 from Woolwich via Dartford (report). On the north side a good new traffic-free path follows the north side of the Thames; it was opened early this year, and runs from Rainham in Essex to Tilbury. (Roadside cycle paths lead from Woolwich to Rainham alongside the A13; see report on the 30-mile route from Woolwich to Tilbury.)

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 30: Woolwich Foot Tunnel

Downriver from Woolwich Ferry, only a few yards, is Woolwich Foot Tunnel. It's very similar to Greenwich Foot Tunnel, with similar drawing-room lifts and round entrance huts, but the addition of a few barriers to hinder attempts to cycle. (Shame! They allow it in the Tyne Tunnel, which has a dedicated tunnel for bikes.)

It's a bit longer than Greenwich at 504m, was opened later in 1921, and is a bit leakier.


From here there's no sensible or pleasant way downriver on the north bank. On the south bank, though, is National Cycle Route 1, which takes you all along the riverside, traffic-free, as far as Erith.

Immediately after the tunnel is Firepower, an artillery museum, which has a cafe. The building complex is the old Woolwich Arsenal, which gave its name to a football team which used to be in London. There's a bunch of life-sized metal male figures that look like Gormleys but aren't, presumably standing around waiting for Woolwich to gentrify. They're very rusty.


Just a few hundred yards on, London feels to have come to a sudden stop, and the scenery gets suddenly broad and estuarial. After Erith you go past a sailing club and alongside fields with horses and get your first view of the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge shimmering hazily in the distance. A pebbly track cuts inland and then, leaving Route 1, it's a couple of miles of roads into Dartford town centre. You'll have to head north up a hill and through housing estates to find the cycle path access to Dartfor's bridge/tunnel crossing system. From Woolwich Foot Tunnel it's about 12 miles to Dartford Crossing.

Thames Crossings 29: Woolwich Ferry

Downriver from Greenwich Foot Tunnel is Woolwich Ferry. And there's no charge for using it. So there really is such a thing as a free launch.

The ferry (two boats on weekdays, one at weekends) runs every ten minutes (15 minutes at weekends) from 6am to 8pm. Outside these times you'll have to use the tunnel a few yards downstream.

The ferry is a proper, chunky affair, built for 500 passengers and 200 tonnes of vehicles. Or, if they ever build the Thames Gateway Bridge and so flog the boats off to ply some churning third-world straits, 2,500 passengers and 600 tonnes of vehicles.


In one form or another the service has been going since 1889. It’s free because it’s the aquatic link from the North Circular to the South Circular, and its short approach roads carry regular queues of cars, lorries with CLEAN ME fingered in the grime on the back, and the odd bus. (Any other British bus routes involve ferries? Discuss.)

On a bike you can head straight up to the front of the road queue and be first on the car deck when they let you on. If you wheel your bike along the footpath they’ll let you on the ferry with the passengers, but you’ll have to schlepp it up and down some stairs; the road approach is better, and the car deck has better views.

It may not be San Francisco or Hong Kong, but it's got a grimy charm and you can see the Dome's sleeping hedgehog, Canary Wharf's inscrutable towers, and the Thames Barrier's alien landing-craft upstream. And it's free, so ha! Take that, Sausalito Ferry ($7.45)! Take that, Star Ferry (HK$6 plus HK$18 for bike)!

As the boat pulls away from the jetty, there’s a safety announcement telling you what to do in case of an emergency on the five-minute crossing. Seasickness is unlikely to be a problem.


If you get time to go downstairs, you’ll find it looks much like a ferry down there: a maze of metal doors and portals to empty rooms marked No Entry, boxes of mystery equipment for survival adrift, and framed lists of regulations in microscopic 1960s type. And no, there's no bar or buffet.

Should you be taking advantage of the freeness by doing a return trip immediately, you’ll be asked to go off and come on again.

From here it's only a few yards to Woolwich Foot Tunnel.

Thames Crossings 28: Greenwich Foot Tunnel

Downriver from the Hilton Docklands-Canary Wharf Ferry is Greenwich Foot Tunnel. The 370m-long tunnel opened in 1902. You're not allowed to cycle in the tunnel, even though it's part of National Cycle Route 1 linking Dover with Inverness: you push through what feels like a tiled drinking straw. On a hot day the iced-drink coolness of the tunnel comes as a relief.


The tunnel is free and open 24 hours a day. You enter by a small brick roundhouse at either end (bottom right). Access during the day is through two splendid wooden-panelled lifts more like Edwardian drawing rooms. They should have a piano and aspidistra in them, and attendant with a waxed moustache reading the Penny Illustrated Paper. There is an attendant, but he'll be reading The Sun. Outside these times, or if the attendant has seen you cycling in the tunnel on the CCTV and refuses to let you in the lift, you have to lug your bike up a long spiral staircase. You're not supposed to take photos inside the tunnel (right) either.


From here along the north side there's no riverside path to Woolwich, only scruffy roads up to the Lea Crossing and then the strange Singaporish new development of Victoria Dock, with its floating hotel, beach and airport. The south side is fabulous though: a traffic-free riverside path that takes you past the wonderful old Naval College, characterful old pubs, dilapidated old factories, the O2 dome and Thames Barrier, with the three huge towers of Canary Wharf looming over you from the other side like wickets in a celestial game of Twenty20. There's a Google map of both routes between here and Woolwich on the website of my book. Either way it's about six miles from here to Woolwich Ferry.

Thames Crossings 27: Hilton Docklands-Canary Wharf Ferry

Downriver from Rotherhithe Tunnel is the Hilton Docklands-Canary Wharf Ferry. The small boat shuttles between Canary Wharf Pier on the north side and Nelson Dock Pier (right), which leads you through Hilton Hotel reception, on the south.

You can take your bike on this commuter service, which costs either £3 or £5 per crossing, depending on whether you believe the photocopied timetables at the hotel or the signboard at Canary Wharf, and runs all day every day, every few minutes at rush hours, less regularly off-peak.


There are several of these commuter ferry services, operated by Thames Clippers. They can take you and bike across the Thames, between the piers of say Tower Bridge's north bank and London Bridge's south bank.

But they don't really count as 'Thames Crossings' any more than taking your bike on an overground train service would. The Hilton-Canary Wharf service is the only water service that explicitly traverses the Thames between facing piers, and the boats clearly say FERRY on the side, so it's a legitimate crossing for our purposes.


Personally I'd miss it out as it costs five quid that could be spent on a perfectly good packet of crisps or glass of coke in a Docklands bar, but here it is listed for completeness.

On Westferry Circus, the roundabout just behind the Canary Wharf Pier, is the Traffic Light Tree. The artwork, from 1998 by Pierre Vivant, is presumably a metaphor for every financial expert around here. It's financed by the taxpayer, does what it likes, and sends out mixed signals.

From here on, either north or south bank, it's streets roughly paralleling the riverside, or the promenade itself, to Greenwich. A Google map shows both routes between Tower Bridge and Greenwich. Either way it's about two miles to Greenwich Foot Tunnel.

Thames Crossings 26: Rotherhithe Tunnel

Downriver from Tower Bridge is Rotherhithe Tunnel. The 1481m-long drainpipe links Rovrive (in English, 'Rotherhithe') on the south bank with Lormarce ('Limehouse') on north.

The entrance to the tunnel on the south side has perhaps the highest concentration of road signs in the world, or at least in this part of Southwark. It asks a lot of drivers' speed-reading skills, especially while they're on the phone.


It opened in 1908 for people and horses, with sharp bends inside both entrances apparently to stop spooked animals – dim creatures of instinct, oblivious to humanity – bolting for the exit.

Now it serves motor traffic, and has a 20mph speed limit for much the same purpose.


Bikes are allowed to use the tunnel, on the narrow single-lane roadway. That would be unpleasant and dangerous, but at least produce some interestingly layered car-horn sound art in the slippery, hall-of-mirrors acoustic.

In practice, the cyclists that do use the tunnel – not many – take the footpath. As only 20 pedestrians (compared to 34,000 cars) use the tunnel a day, according to TfL, you're unlikely to come into conflict.

Not a bike trip you'd want to do every day, but a tick-list experience to do once only for a few seconds, like bungee-jumping or eating tripe or working for Land Registry. Here's a 45-second video giving you an idea of what it's like. From here on, either north or south bank, it's streets roughly paralleling the riverside, or the promenade itself, to Greenwich. A Google map shows both routes between Tower Bridge and Greenwich. Either way it's about half a mile to the Canary Wharf-Rotherhithe 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.