Morning or Half-day Tour

The tour starts in central London and en route to Docklands the city’s development is explained and in particular its role in the heyday of Empire as a physical marketplace and the largest port in the world and its more recent one as a major global finance centre.

The first stop is made at St Katharine’s Dock (opened in 1828 and now a marina) to view it, Tower Bridge and the nearby warehouse conversions. The route continues through Wapping, an area largely of warehouse conversions and some new apartment blocks, and via a tunnel (opened in 1993) to the Isle of Dogs. Here a stop is made at the southern end to enjoy the so-called “Canaletto view” across to Greenwich with its Old Royal Naval College and Old Royal Observatory. The Isle was once the centre of the Thames shipbuilding industry of which there are today still a few reminders.

From there we drive through the East India Docks to the Royal Docks complex where we climb to a high-level pedestrian bridge for a 360-degree panorama taking in the ExCeL exhibition centre, the University of East London campus, London City Airport, the Britannia “urban village” and other landmarks. This vantage point is also used to explain the progress being made on the construction of new stadia and other facilities for the London 2012 Olympic games, most of which are in the Docklands zone or within a few kilometres of it. Mention is also made of plans for the redevelopment of the area further to the East, known as the Thames Gateway. Before leaving the area we drive though a new residential area and on a full-day tour we can stop to view the Thames Barrier, opened in 1983 to protect London from flooding.

On the return journey westwards the development of the area’s infrastructure – the road system, the Docklands Light Railway and the extension of the underground Jubilee Line - is illustrated. On reaching the Isle of Dogs again we head for Canary Wharf, the new financial district where about 90,000 are employed. Here we take a walk around the 40-hectare site to see not only the Manhattan-style architecture but also the surviving 200-year-old warehouses and the new underground shopping malls. The area contains a variety of restaurants, cafés and sandwich bars.

The half-day tour ends by returning to central London via the East End, an ethnically diverse area.

Afternoon Tour

After a break for lunch the full-day tour heads south through the Blackwall tunnel and we stop at the Millennium Dome, now known as the “02”, a major entertainment and sporting venue which will be used for the 2012 Olympics. A circuit is made around the surrounding area, once the site of the largest gasworks in Europe and now being redeveloped as a residential and retail area.

We then pass through Historic Maritime Greenwich (where a stop can be made) to the old Surrey Commercial docks. In the 19th century these were used mainly for timber imports and then developed for cold storage and grain handling. This area became the scene of one of the largest housing developments of recent years.

Stops are made to view the Greenland Dock, once the home of whaling fleets, and another for a panoramic view of the river landscape ranging from Tower Bridge through 180O to the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf.

A final stop is made on the South Bank of the Thames between London and Tower Bridges to view the City, the traditional finance centre, on the opposite bank and to review the day’s discoveries. The tour ends by returning to central London.