News Section
Please click here for the News Desk Edited by Jeannette Briggs
©1999-2007. The River Thames
Guide Ltd.
thames cruises, thames boat hire, thames hotels, thames restaurants,
boats for sale uk, thames property, corporate entertainments london, thames
pleasure cruises, the river thames, thames leisure, thames cafes, thames events,
thames festivals, thames attractions, thames boats, thames tours, thames history,
thames venues The River Thames Guide - A user friendly guide to what the Thames and its
surrounding areas have to offer in the way of boats and boating, entertainment,
food and drink, and tourist information.
Thames (Roman, Tamesis), river in southern England, the longest and most important
river in England. It rises in four headstreams the Isis (or Windrush), the Churn,
the Coln, and the Leach on the south-eastern slope of the Cotswold Hills, in
Gloucestershire, near Cheltenham. The streams converge on Oxford and flow generally
south-east to Reading, through a gap in the Chiltern escarpment. The Thames
thereafter follows a generally eastern course through London, and a few kilometres
below Gravesend it expands into a wide estuary and enters the North Sea. It
is about 340 km (210 mi) long. At London Bridge (see London's Bridges) the width
of the river is about 265 m (870 ft); at thames cruises Woolwich, 448
m (1,470 ft); at Gravesend pier, 732 m (2,400 ft); 5 km (3 mi) below Gravesend,
1,180 m (3,870 ft); at Nore Light, 10 km (6 mi); and at its mouth, between Whitstable
and Foulness Point, the estuary is 29 km (18 mi) across. The Port of London
and Docklands. The area designated as the Port of London extends from Teddington
Lock, which is about 16 km (10 mi) west of the city and the limit of the tidal
water, downriver to the outer limit of the Tongue light vessel, a distance of
thames boat hire 150 km (93 mi). Ocean-going vessels navigate to the
upper part of the river through Tower thames pleasure cruises Bridge:
these are mainly cruise ships. During the 19th century the docks, at the hub
of Britain's worldwide trade, made London the world's busiest port. Rapid decline
set in after 1945, however, and shipping is now much diminished. Bulk cargoes
of aggregates are shipped by coasters up river as far as Fulham, thus avoiding
many lorry loads travelling on the city's roads. In the reverse direction, much
of London's domestic rubbish is transported in containers to landfill sites
towards the estuary. Cargo handling thames hotels takes place on about
100 riverside wharves between Deptford and Canvey Island as well as at enclosed
docks at Tilbury. On average 52 million tonnes of cargo is handled in the port
annually, making it Britain's largest general cargo port.
It has two oil refineries at Shellhaven and Coryton, and the only cane sugar
refinery in the United Kingdom at thames restaurants Silvertown near
the Thames Flood Barrier. The Ford Motor Company at its Dagenham riverside works
manufactured and shipped completed cars to continental Europe by sea (in 2002
the company switched to producing diesel engines). The whole region has been
boats for sale uk designated as a development area by the government
under the title of Thames Gateway Initiative. The London Docklands, in the capital's
East End, have especially declined greatly since the mid-1960s, and the areas
closest to the city have been rezoned for housing and commercial development.
A Conservative government initiative in the 1980s to regenerate the area led
to some business relocation at sites such as Canary Wharf, the construction
of Britain's thames property tallest building, Canada Tower (also known
as Canary Wharf Tower), and the redevelopment of riverside warehouses as luxury
apartments. The part of the river immediately below London Bridge is called
the Pool. Two embankments have been formed, one on the northern shore from Blackfriars
Bridge to Westminster and one on the southern shore from Westminster Bridge
to Vauxhall. Between Hampton Court and the Tower of London the river is crossed
by 20 road and 9 rail bridges. corporate entertainments london The world's
first bored tunnel was built under the Thames by Marc and Isambard Kingdom Brunel
from 1825 to 1842. The latest road bridge is the QEII Bridge opened by Elizabeth
II in 1991. Sited east of the city, it joins the counties of Essex and Kent,
and is the north-south link of the M25 London orbital motorway (the Dartford
tunnels are the south-north link). In June 2000 the Millennium Bridge the
river thames opened, London's only dedicated pedestrian bridge across the
Thames. It was also the first new bridge to be built over the river in the capital
for more than 100 years, and connects St Paul's Cathedral to the new Tate Gallery
of Modern Art in Southwark. However, the bridge was forced to close the day
after it opened due to safety concerns. After proposed modifications were undertaken
the bridge reopened in early 2002. In January that year, the first inland emergency
lifeboat service in England was launched along the Thames in London, with stations
at Chiswick Pier, Gravesend, Teddington, and Tower Pier, and with headquarters
at the Thames Barrier.
