Chiswick & Hammersmith Walking Tour
Highlights: Experience time-warped riverside villages and a series of malls lined with magnificent mansions, old fishermens’ cottages, historic pubs and a deluge of rowing clubs. Pass by the birthplace of the English Landscape Garden Movement and the finest example of Neo-Palladian architecture in Britain. Contrast Georgian splendour with lost industries, tales of hauntings and smuggling, radical socialists, courtesans, war heroes, film and tv stars.
This fascinatingly varied walk starts by Kew Bridge at the quaint and relatively unchanged village of Strand on the Green. We pass a wooded island and make our way to iconic Chiswick House and Gardens, where we pause for refreshments before rejoining the river at old Chiswick village. The walk continues along the riverside, past a pub with the shortest bar in England and the final stretches of the Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Race. We finish at handsome Hammersmith Bridge, London’s first suspension bridge.
Dates: Sunday 18 June, Sunday 27 August 2023.
Time: Depart 11:00 Kew Bridge (meet opposite the Strand Cafe, Strand on the Green). Finish approx 14:30 by Hammersmith Bridge.
Duration & Distance: Approx 3.5 to 4 hours including a break for refreshments. Distance 3.3 miles ( 5.4 kilometres)
Cost & Booking: Ticket price £18. Price includes booking fee. Pre-booking online required.
Check-in: check-in 10.55 opposite the Strand Cafe, Strand on the Green, London W4 3NQ for 11:00 departure.
There are trains to nearby Kew Bridge Station from London Waterloo. Bus route 391 to Kew Bridge Station from Gunnersbury or Richmond (London Underground, District Line). Bus route 65 from Ealing Broadway or Richmond stations (District Line) to Kew Bridge.
Terrain: Mostly paved paths and tracks.
Additional information: This walk is dog-friendly. Tours take place in all but the very worst weather.