My Day Out

So, the plan was, head into London by lunchtime, pick up a boat at Westminster pier to take us through and around the Thames Barrier on the water, then on to the Thames Barrier pier, so we could spend an afternoon at the visitor centre learning about a huge great machine that looks like a series of buildings and also have a cup of tea and blueberry muffin in the café. I checked the boat timetable online, and all looked good. After I printed it out I noticed a tiny note at the bottom which said ‘These boats cruise to/from the Thames Barrier, but only stop at Barrier Gardens Pier for pre-booked groups’. Hmmm, surely not? So I rang them, and yes, it is true. If you want to visit the Thames Barrier you cannot visit by boat unless there are 15 of you wanting to do the same thing at the same time. You have to go by car, or have a fiddly and time consuming journey by bus or train. The time involved means that you can’t get up close to the barrier on the water, and visit the visitor centre in the same afternoon (or at least not without scrapping the cup of tea and piece of cake). When I rang the Thames Barrier Visitor Centre they didn’t seem remotely perturbed by this.

We went to the Imperial War Museum instead. Lovely tea and cake.