The final boat trip was the Circular Cruise route from Westminster to St. Katharine Dock. Was it to be another City Cruise cattle crush or Thames River Services holiday-mood?
It turned out to be a bit of both. The service was, well shall we say erratic? The ticket booth (where I paid £6.83, no idea how that number was arrived at) was empty for the 5 - 10 minutes just necessary for me to miss the 6 pm sailing resulting in a half an hour wait for the next. There was a shortage of staff down by the quay, leaving some confused tourists trying to get on a party boat full of surveyors out on a "networking event".
Then an unbranded boat turned up and it turned out to be the same I had been on for the Thames River Services trip - turns out they are the same company. But different from City Cruise and Thames Clipper - they seemed very keen to point that out.
Hmm... maybe need to raise the company profile a bit as couldn't help but notice there was one company much more visible out on the river:
So off we went, one evening after work when I was in town anyhow. There wasn't much of a commentary but I sort of could see the point now of the tourist boats.
The thing about Thames Clippers are they are the boy and girl racers of the river, throttling up and zipping in and out of the other boats, causing them to through their hands up in the air. There's limited outside space and its far too close to the diesel exhaust.
The tourist boats take their time, have a big open space so you can see in all directions and sometimes have a commentary.
This route was a bit of a an-hoc affair with stops on request rather than every time so you had respond when they said anyone for Embankment or St. Kats (which I did, to the latter). The official list of piers was:
- Westminster
- Embankment
- Festival
- Bankside
- St. Katharine
And at the last of these, off I stepped, having been on all of the scheduled river routes in London.
Tick!
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