Tower Bridge to Greenwich Hike | ADHD Social | Everyone Welcome

Six miles. One river. A couple of pubs for refreshments.

So, Tower Bridge to Greenwich via a rest stop at a nice pub, a bit more walking, then refreshments at the famous Trafalgar Tavern.

I identified the worst part of going for a walk with other people, which is the bit where somebody has to look at a map, and I have removed it.
There is a river. The river goes to Greenwich. We go where the river goes. That is the entire navigational burden of the day, and it is being carried by... geology.

Six miles sounds like a commitment. It is flat the whole way, there is a pub in the middle, a better pub at the end, and a train station roughly every mile in case you decide at any point that you have had enough of us. Which is fine. We have often had enough of us.

What you will walk past

Shad Thames.
We begin in the canyon of old spice and tea warehouses behind Butler's Wharf, which have iron bridges strung between them three storeys up and now contain, instead of nutmeg, people in finance. Genuinely spectacular, and it happens in the first ten minutes, so if you leave immediately afterwards you will still have got your money's worth. It is free.

Cherry Garden Pier.
Turner is said to have sketched The Fighting Temeraire from roughly around here. "Roughly around here" is doing a lot of work in that sentence. Art history is significantly vaguer than it lets on. There are benches, and a good view back at Tower Bridge, which from this distance finally looks like a bridge rather than a queue.

The Mayflower, Rotherhithe.
Halfway. Named for the ship that left from this stretch of river in 1620, carrying a group of people who had struggled to settle comfortably anywhere and had decided the answer was to go somewhere else entirely. We mention this without comment.
Two minutes up the road is the Brunel Museum, where you can climb down into the shaft of the first tunnel ever dug under a navigable river. It is a hole. It is a magnificent hole. Arguably the finest hole in Britain. Anyone who would rather look at a hole than sit in a pub will be respected and possibly envied.

Surrey Quays.
Full disclosure. For about twenty minutes the Thames Path gives up on the Thames and wanders inland past dock basins and new-build flats in a sort of beige trance. You will experience a flat, grey feeling. Nothing has gone wrong. You have not taken a wrong turn. This is not a metaphor for anything. It is just Surrey Quays, and it ends.

Deptford to Greenwich.
The river returns, Canary Wharf rears up across the water like a bar chart that got out, and then you come round the bend and there is the Cutty Sark, sitting in a glass box, being magnificent about it.

The Trafalgar Tavern.
Ten minutes past the Cutty Sark, hard on the river, Georgian windows, whitebait, the works. This is the end. We are not going anywhere after this. If the idea of walking six miles fills you with a quiet dread, come straight here and meet us at half three. You will be greeted exactly as warmly as the people with blisters, and you will have made better choices than all of them.

The admin
Date: Saturday 5th September
Meet: The Pommelers Rest - Wetherspoons
https://maps.app.goo.gl/dcfKuVFvUpa4EH9W7
12pm - Meet at this pub just moments from Tower Bridge, where we will awkwardly chat for a little while, waiting for stragglers, late arrivals and gin soaked dandies, then we will head off at 12.30.
Halfway stop: The Mayflower, Rotherhithe
Greenwich: around 5.30-6.00
The Trafalgar Tavern: Table booked for 6.30
Cost: free. Bring money for chips. Or vapes, whatever it is you young people spend money on to numb late stage capitalism blues.

Things worth knowing

You may leave at any moment without explaining yourself.
Canada Water is the cleanest exit, roughly halfway, step free, Jubilee and Overground. Rotherhithe, Surrey Quays, Deptford and Greenwich are all on the route. Nobody is counting heads at the end. There is no register. There has never been a register.
You may also join late, which is the sophisticated option. Or just join for drinks at the Trafalgar Tavern, or meet us halfway at The Mayflower. I will try to keep checking the app.

Getting home
Greenwich has the DLR at Cutty Sark, trains to London Bridge and Cannon Street, and a pier. The boat back into town is the single gentlest way to leave anywhere, and you get to watch the whole walk run backwards from a seat, like undoing it.

An important note
This is a community event. It exists so that neurodivergent people can spend an afternoon somewhere they don't have to explain themselves, mask, or perform being normal.
That's the whole purpose.

It is not a dating event. It is not a pulling event. It is not a networking event either, so please don't hand anybody a business card.
If something develops naturally between two adults over time, that's life and none of our business.

What doesn't work is treating the room as a dating pool, or as an audience.
Read the room. If a conversation is winding down, let it wind down.
Nobody here owes anyone their attention, their number, or an explanation for leaving. That applies to everyone equally, including the person running it.

If someone makes you uncomfortable, find one of us and say so. You don't have to justify it, you don't have to be certain, and nothing further happens without your say-so. Anyone making other people uncomfortable will be asked to leave, and there won't be a debate about it.
That's it.

Go and enjoy six hundred years of pubs.

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