What’s Floating in London?

Three surprise discoveries

London — Photo by Author

Introduction

When you think of a capital city, what floats isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. Until you look again…

I love it when you see things with a new perspective. London is, after all, a city with a river running through it. So there must be plenty floating about on the river, right?

Apart from the obvious like rubbish (litter, trash) on the water or ducks, geese, swans and seagulls, here are the discoveries I made recently.

I eat rubbish

If there’s rubbish (litter, trash), there must be some way of collecting it. The first thing I spotted was this rubbish trap (below) floating on the water, suitably named ‘I Eat Rubbish’.

Floating rubbish trap — Photo by Author

As an aside, I rather like the alliteration of it being called a ‘trash trap’, as it would be in American English.

Honestly, I’ve never noticed it before, so I can’t say whether this is a new contribution to cleaning up the River Thames or not.

Checking out the website clarified that this is an initiative by the Port of London Authority that started in 2015. It encourages people to join teams to gather litter on the foreshore that inevitably collects, especially after events.

So, this floating rubbish trap has a two-fold purpose.

The first is to passively collect floating litter on the water. I did see a few plastic water bottles at one end.

The other purpose is to advertise the initiative and get more people involved in cleaning up the Thames.

It’s attached to a buoy but must be anchored somehow, so it doesn’t float away.

Pontoons

This one may not be immediately obvious, as piers look very fixed. But, as the Thames River is a tidal river, there are ebb and flow tides with two high tides and two low tides daily.

Therefore, all piers in central London have to have floating pontoons that allow for the change in height of up to 7 metres (23 feet) within six hours.

The floating pontoons of the pier rise and fall with the tide level of the Thames on three posts, two of which you can see below, beyond the walkway, with the third one just out of shot on the left.

Fixed pier — Photo by Author

Below is another view of the floating pier, showing the walkway down to the pontoon as a boat comes in to drop off passengers and take on any new ones waiting to climb aboard one of the Thames Clippers.

Floating pontoon — Photo by Author

The fixed walkway has huge hinges and rollers to allow it to slide and tilt up or down to accommodate the rise and fall of the pontoon with the tide.

Incidentally, the domed building in the background is St Paul’s Cathedral. When showing something of London, it’s nice to have an iconic structure to include, even if it’s purely incidental.

Blimp

It just so happened that on this day, we were in the right place at the right time to see the Goodyear Blimp floating over London! The main picture shows it coming towards the Millennium Bridge where we were standing.

Photo by Author

The green-and-yellow bridge is Southwark Bridge (pronounced ‘Suth-uck’), and the one in the distance has the two towers of the iconic Tower Bridge. The other two towers in the main picture on the left-hand side are part of Canon Street Railway Station.

The skyscrapers in the distance are in Canary Wharf, in the Docklands.

The blimp is a type of airship filled with helium, kept at low pressure so any small holes in it wouldn’t cause it to burst or whiz around like a party balloon.

It’s a cherished American cultural symbol — Goodyear being an American tyre and rubber brand — that is touring the UK between 3 July and 14 July.

The Goodyear Blimp has been flying in one form or another since 1925. It last floated over the River Thames in London in 2022. This year it’s marking the Fourth of July week.

We just got really lucky to see it floating above London!

Finally…

It’s great that something is being done to reduce the litter along the Thames.

As for the engineering of those walkways and pontoons on the piers of central London, it’s all beyond me, but interesting to know.

The Goodyear Blimp was a fun sight in the skies over the River Thames.

These examples are not what I expected to find when out and about in London with the ‘What floats’ theme in my head. Isn’t it great when you start seeing familiar surroundings with new eyes?

Thank you for reading

Thank you for Dennett for this month’s writing prompt ‘What Floats’.

People, who’ve asked to be tagged: Aidan Gerard Patrick McCarthy Lu Skerdoo