Thames Landscape Strategy - Hampton to Kew -

Treasures

Summer is here and the River Thames is getting as busy as ever, it really is the best place to spend a lazy afternoon whiling away the hours. To help visitors understand the wonderful River Thames in our part of London, Sir David Attenborough Patron of the Thames Landscape Strategy launched two new walking leaflets for us last month at our summer party.

The first leaflet is called ‘Treasures by the Thames’ – a guide to some of the best places to see along the river between Hampton and Chiswick. It was decided to produce this pamphlet as a result of feedback from visitors and local people who were letting us know that whilst they loved the river and had some knowledge of what to see, their appetite to learn more and to discover new places was strong. People quite often did not know what was across the river from where they live.

The Treasures guide lists 45 of the best places to visit chosen by a group of river users, businesses and local people. In deciding which places to include it was important to embrace many of the ordinary places that make the river special as well as the more traditional attractions such as Hampton Court and Kew Gardens.
For this reason the Treasures guide is quite diverse listing riverside pubs, rural towpaths and simple views across the river that could so easily be overlooked in a more conventional guide. Trees and wildlife get a big mention as well as some of the most interesting places such as the naked ladies statue at York House and the Coronation Stone in Kingston.

The second leaflet is a guide to the wildlife found along the river. The guide depicts an idealised stretch of riverbank listing the habitats and species one may expect to see including reedbeds, foreshore, woodland and scrub. The leaflet includes advice on how to spot wildlife and also how the river is managed to sustain this diversity of fauna and flora. Both leaflets can be found in local libraries or at the tourist information centres.

Finally my annual plea to get you all afloat. There is simply no better way to experience the river than on it. This may be by hiring one of the rowing boats at Molesey or Richmond or catching the trip boats that make their way between Westminster, Kew, Richmond, Kingston and Hampton. It is a most splendid day out and one that could be under threat due to competition from all sorts of other competing recreational activities.

Whatever you get up to this summer make certain you spend at least some time down on the river and maybe take one of our guides to help you discover something new.
Copies of the walking guides and details of how to get afloat this summer can be downloaded from www.thames-landscape-strategy.org.uk

Jason Debney is Co-ordinator of the Thames Landscape Strategy

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