Sixty ways to cross the Thames: on foot, under the riverbed, is also possible

LondonHow long does it take to cross the Thames on foot? It seems impossible to walk on water, right, but there are approximate ways to calculate it. And how many different ways must one get from one bank of the river to the other within the limits of Greater London? As of this Sunday, April 6, officially 59, including the ferry, the cable car, a tunnel exclusively for road traffic, public transport, and, of course, using the 25 bridges that connect the north and south of the city: bridges for all types of vehicles, bridges for the Underground, the railway, and the Overground.

However, you can take a walk below the level of the riverbed—between ten and fifteen meters—through several tunnels that run from one bank to the other. A couple are pedestrian-only. But the third is not. The third, the Rotherhithe Tunnel, is a very rare example of mixed use, where drivers, daring cyclists, and even more daring pedestrians can coexist, although for health reasons, walking or cycling the 1,482-meter stretch is not advisable. At least not without an oxygen tank and mask. The air inside the tunnel is not very breathable. 35,000 cars and vans pass through it every day, and the white tiled walls have a patina of grime that would exhaust even Bert, the chimney sweep. Mary PoppinsThe tunnel began to be built in 1904 and entered into service in 1908: then, horse-drawn carriages coexisted with human beings, and the smells inside the long tube were more natural.

The conditions under which the hole was made were extreme, as reported by a journalist from the Daily News in 1906, on a visit to the construction site: "With a little care, you step into an elevator, an iron cage open at either end, on the floor of which are a couple of rails for transporting a wagon. A small bell rings somewhere, and you cling to a bar above as the elevator drops through a hole. A few seconds, and you step out of the elevator into a new world, a world full of spectral men in mud wigs, pale and almost naked, for the temperature is around eighty degrees [Farenheit, 27 degrees Celsius] and the work is extremely hard so that you never become painfully conscious of having too few clothes..."

The first step on foot

Starting this Monday, April 7th, there will be one more way to cross the Thames. There will finally be 60, not counting the various cable and service tunnels—no less than fourteen. But the new one will only be suitable for vehicles: it is the Silvertown Tunnel, which links Canning Town and the Royal Docks with the Greenwich Peninsula. It will be an alternative to the Blackwall Tunnel, an increasingly aging infrastructure that does not handle the passage of more than 50,000 vehicles per day very well, and which registers no less frequently.

Perhaps the most famous crossing from one side of the Thames to the other, or one of those most identified with the river and with London, is Tower Bridge, with its iconic image of the two towers and, if you are lucky enough to see it from the Thames, the raised footbridge.

On the other hand, one of the lesser-known tunnels is the pedestrian-only Woolwich Tunnel, located in the east of the city, in the borough of Newham, connecting the north and south of the borough that gives it its name. This tunnel, however, is the poor relation of the three tunnels that, beneath the bed of the Thames, pedestrians or visitors can cross with just a stroll. The most famous of the three is the Greenwich Tunnel. Be that as it may, all three are a testament to the Victorian heritage and spirit. As is the Thames Tunnel, the first in the world built beneath a navigable river, which is its predecessor. Originally designed for horse-drawn carriages, construction took eighteen years. However, from its opening on March 25, 1843, it was used primarily by pedestrians, becoming little more than a tourist attraction in the capital of the empire and in the challenge that engineering posed to the laws of physics. But in 1869, it was converted into a railway tunnel for use by the East London Line, which has been part of the London Overground network since 2010. It still connects Rotherhithe and Wapping stations.

Unlike the Rotherhithe tunnel, the approximately 200,000 tiles that line the walls of the Greenwich foot tunnel, with the exception of a first section at the entrance to the north entrance, in the Isle of Dog area—historically a very poor area of London until the construction of the second tunnel—remain more or less white. The 370-meter-long Chino-Xano walk, centimeter by centimeter, takes no more than 4 to 5.5 minutes, depending on the gait and health of the passerby. The north entrance is accessed by a very characteristic spiral staircase: 87 steps. The south entrance, 100. Both have elevators, which were installed in 1910, eight years after the infrastructure opened.

The Woolwich Tunnel, with very similar characteristics, but longer (504 meters), and without the glass domes at both entrances, does not lead to any tourist areas in London, and serves little more than local use. Only about 800 people travel through it per day, according to the most recent data from the borough, from 2021. In contrast, the Greenwich Tunnel, with tourist attractions in the southern area, such as the Cutty Sark, the Royal Observatory, the Naval Museum, the Painted Hall, the market, and its old map shops, with treasures, in both directions. Both are open 365 days a year.

The reason for this pair of tunnels can be understood partly as a tale of social history and partly as a matter of geography. When London became the world's busiest port in the late 18th century, the docks on the north bank of the river needed thousands of dockers and workers of all kinds, many of whom lived in the south. Ferries were initially the usual transport option. But the city's then-legendary fog meant many scheduled crossings had to be canceled. The obvious solution was to build a bridge, but to the east of Tower Bridge, the width of the Thames is excessive, unless structurally more ambitious bridges were erected, which would have blocked the passage of ships anyway. The precedent of the Thames Tunnel favored the chosen solution for Greenwich and Woolwich. But they took more than fifty years to complete, and a decade elapsed between the opening of the first and the second.

Beyond stories of three ghosts circulating about the Greenwich Tunnel –none about the Woolwich Tunnel–, the tunnels have become a meeting place for enthusiasts of the found soundThis is the collection of sounds from the world around us, noisy sounds of all kinds that are often used in electronic music mixes. Marcus Leadley, head of the study of this variety at Goldsmiths University and an enthusiast of tunnel sonority, says it's not unlike that of churches. "Churches were specifically designed to have this kind of reverberation. They were the media centers of their time. Tunnels have a very similar characteristic."