Visit Britain ran a promotion recently whereby if you signed up to their marketing emails you got in return a £20 voucher, which just goes to show how much your personal data is worth these days. Figuring that whoever wants my personal data already has it I signed up and duly received my voucher.
The voucher was fairly restrictive in that it had to be used against a booking within seven days of being issued. I decided on Tower Bridge for two reasons: 1. It though it would be interesting and 2. the voucher covered the whole entrance price so I’d get in for free! 😂
Rainy Walkways
I emerged from Tower Hill underground station into the rain and made a dash to the entrance of the bridge. While waiting to have my ticket checked I was chatting to the guy on the door and commented that it was good to be in out of the rain before he told me he was spending all day managing the queues outside – oops!
The visit consists of two areas – the first is the walkways above the bridge deck and then the engine rooms. To reach the walkways you, as you might expect, have to climb quite a few stairs although, surprisingly, there is a lift too. As you mount the stairs, painted on the walls, are little nuggets of information about the bridge from which I learnt that the bridge has been repainted seven times and the last last repaint required 22,000 litres of paint. These were all good and informative and helped pass the time on the way up.
You walk across one walkway and then back across the other and then back again to get out back to ground level (although this wasn’t made entirely clear). There isn’t much on the walkways but what you are there for are the views which are great and classic images of modern London: The Shard, The Walkie-talkie and City Hall etc. There are small sliding windows especially to give you a view unobstructed by dirty, rain splattered glass too. There is also a glass floor on the first walkway affording a murky view on to the road below.
Engine Room
You emerge from the walkways at ground level on the far side of the bridge from where you entered and then follow a painted blue line off the bridge to another building underneath which houses the engine room. Given that these are historic steam engines in beautiful condition (not how they would have looked during their working life) one can only assume that the modern engines are hidden away somewhere else. The steam engines could raise the bascules (the flappy bits that look like they’ve come from an oversized pinball machine) in an incredible 60 seconds.
I’d liked to have seen a bridge lift too but that was probably asking a bit much to try and get the timing right on that.
I exited via the inevitable gift shop where I bought my second pair of socks of the day having had a most enjoyable visit.
