Walking from Hammersmith to Vauxhall

My regular walking companion often suggests that we walk along The Thames and while I prefer new territory (which is increasingly hard to find) I like The Thames too so I often agree to his suggestion. The stretches close to Kingston and Richmond are very familiar to us so we prefer to start a little distance from home and on this day we settled on Hammersmith. The end point was to be determined later depending on time.

We followed Thames Path most of the way, crossing from the north bank to the south bank at Battersea Bridge with me forcing us to take a few small detours to take in roads that we had not walked before. Doing that enables us to discover things like South Park in Fulham and impressive looking Victorian school building opposite it.

The two highlights on the north bank were both newish housing development, Chelsea Riverside where we walked through the nicely landscaped grounds and Powerhouse where we admired the conversion of the former Lots Road Power Station.

On the south bank we took a scenic route through Battersea Park to walk around the lake rather along the river for the umpteenth time.

We almost came a cropper at Battersea Power Station where it looked as though we would not be able to get through the site and we got right to the end of the wide path along the river before we found a small turning to the right that took us back on to the main route.

One of the reasons we walk that section several times a year is because of the constant building works which means there is always something new to see and criticise.

One of the newer building is the American Embassy and it is always good to see the Palestinian flag flying nearby.

We had done 15km by the time we got to Vauxhall so that seemed an appropriate place to stop. It was only lunchtime so there was plenty of time for more walking later in the day.