Thames River Routes: RB1

RB1 is the longest of the Thames Clipper routes, with some sailings going all the way from Battersea Power Station to Woolwich. But not all sailings stop at all the piers and there is a clear choice that you can either take #thelongestroute or do #allthepiers.

I decided to do the latter as the longest route overlapped two other RBs, namely RB2 from Battersea Power Station to London Bridge and RB5 from North Greenwich to Woolwich (which did on different days). However there were some piers that only RB1 went to.... hence #allthepiers.

Are you following all this? If you want, check out the timetable here but there doesn't really appear to be a single RB1, rather a set of combination of piers connecting multiple start and multiple end points.

Anyhow, in this case I got the #allthepiers route from Embankment to North Greenwich as follows::

• Embankment
• Westminster
• London Eye (Waterloo)
• Blackfriars
• Bankside
• London Bridge City
• Tower
• Canary Wharf
• Greenland (Surrey Quays)
• Masthouse Terrace
• Greenwich
• North Greenwich (The O2)

Jolly nice it was too, initially heading upriver to Westminster (above) and the London Eye before turning down river.

At the back of the boat is a seating area where you can admire the views (above and below), though you also get a certain amount of diesel engine fumes.

The boat was a lot less busy after Tower Bridge as quite a lot of passengers were just doing the central sights. After that there's a long stretch without any piers until Canary Wharf, but the view backwards is pretty good:

In this stretch the river opens up and you have to know what to look for (Thames Police Museum, Thames Tunnel etc.) rather than there being obvious sights.

However just beyond Canary Wharf is Greenwich, home to the Cutty Sark:

Pretty much everyone got out at this point but I kept on to North Greenwich, the last stop on this particular RB1 and the O2 Dome:

Here there was a wait for the return journey when saw the "secret ferry" connecting the North Greenwich with Trinity Wharf:

Note: the hashtag #allthepiers is a subtle reference to one of my favourite YouTube channels, namely "All The Stations" in which Geoff and Vicki went to all the railway stations in Britain during the summer of 2017. If you haven't seen them, head over to YouTube as its a real treat.