Thames Path: Walbrook Wharf and Southwark Bridge

Barges at Walbrook Wharf and Southwark Bridge from the Thames Path
pencils and coloured pencil in Moleskine, 8″ x 10″
images copyright Katherine Tyrrell

The Thames Path provides lots of places to sketch the Thames up close and get views which aren’t so well known. These are the sketches from the path as it approaches Walbrook Wharf in the City of London

Walbrook Wharf sits inbetween Cannon Street Station and Southwark Bridge. This is where a lot of London’s rubbish comes to be packed into containers and sent down the river on barges to landfill sites. The barges are enourmous robust affairs stacked with rust coloured metal containers.

I was sketching at what must have been close to high tide and I do remember trying to work out at one point whether or not the path I was standing on was above or below the high water mark as I was looking out through an arch in a brick wall.

I was sketching at night and in half light and had to make notes about colour which I added later.

The best bit was the sound track – this is what I wrote when I orginally posted these sketches on my blog.

You need to imagine the sounds which accompanied the making of these sketches. Water from a tidal river with a strong current is ebbing and flowing – slapping in a rhythmic fashion against the sides of the barges. Every so often it’s stirred up as the wash left by a passing Thames Tugboat or a Thames Clipper reaches the sides and crashes very noisily against the sides of the barges and the embankment – just beneath my feet!
Walbrook Wharf and Southwark Bridge