Twelve of us gathered at the DLR Cutty Sark station on a brightish day. Being a good time for retired people to be away and trouble on the Met Line the numbers were down from the first time I did a similar walk when 37 turned up! It was good to see Simon C with us again and with a happy smile after his accident albeit with his evident wounds. We stopped at several strategic places through the day as I gave some information about the historic places that we were visiting. I tried to adopt a more leisurely pace to allow the magnificence of some of the locations to be appreciated. The Greenwich area with Cutty Sark, the Royal Naval College, Queens House and Greenwich Park had to be the highlight of the morning. We stopped to have our morning break at One Tree Hill in Greenwich Park. The views over Greenwich to The City were splendid and we compared what we can see now with J.W.Turner’s painting, displayed at that location, of the exact same view but in 1809. Canary Wharf certainly looked a lot greener then! Following our break we made our way to the river via a display of ship’s anchors through the ages. We passed TfL’s emergency back-up Greenwich Power Station and continued along the Thames path past many new and colourful modern high rise buildings. Arriving at Enderby's Wharf, which is famous for its rope making and submarine telecommunication cables, we started on a detour which took us away from the river to allow repairs and reconstruction of the dock walls around the Victoria Deep Dock. Before too long we had arrived back at the riverside by a golf driving range. Our riverside walk took us around the northern side of the O2 Arena on Greenwich Peninsular. We crossed the Greenwich Prime Meridian and to our lunch stop near the O2. There was ample seating and cover if we had needed it. We said goodbye to Simon C at this point as he had to get back for a hospital appointment.

Lunch over, we continued, briefly looking at the enormous Damien Hirst bronze sculpture named Demon with Bowl. It was intriguing at least, if not beautiful. Passing many more modern high rise blocks, our next stop was the Thames Barrier but we had to walk past a particularly noisy section by a gravel workings premises. It was a good reminder that The Thames is a working river and these places are part of it. The Thames Barrier looked splendid shining in the sunshine and the high quality toilets well worth a visit! Passing through a derelict factory area with a fascinating history and passing cannons from the old Woolwich Arsenal on the riverside we arrived at the Woolwich Ferry for our anticipated boat ride. We were a little disappointed to find them both out of action. A fault on one of the pair of boats that morning meant that neither could operate while we were there so we had to use the foot tunnel to cross the Thames. That was a different sort of experience. This tunnel was over 100 years old and 500m in length. The 126 steps coming up at the end was equivalent to one more Wednesday Rambler’s hill and we certainly felt it. Not much further and we were at the end of the London City Airport runway watching jets come and go. The walk ended shortly afterwards at Gallions Reach where most of us took the DLR to Custom House. Five of us walked the short distance, some with ice creams in hand past sculptures and preserved dockside cranes to the cable car where we shared a cabin to take us over the Thames to North Greenwich Tube Station and our journey into the rush hour and back home.