Thames Barrier

One of the few places Dave really wanted to visit was the Thames Barrier. We knew Chris would also enjoy the engineering and architecture behind it, so we looked for an open weekend, and visited last Saturday. The River Thames is 520 m wide here. In comparison, it is only about 200 m wide at Westminster Bridge by Big Ben.



Looking upstream, you can see the white Millennium Dome on the south side of the river. That is where the Olympic torch ended its London run last month, and it will be a major venue in the 2012 Olympics centered around East London. The tall buildings are part of Canary Wharf, located on the north side of the river (it bends a great deal in this area), and directly across from Greenwich.



The visitor centre had a video on the building of the barrier (completed in 1983), a working model of it, and a very helpful person named Joel to answer all of our questions. The outside structure is much larger, but much less detailed! This section of the "barrier" is up, and when it is rotated down, it rests where Dave and Chris are sitting.



Each of the 6 larger sections is 61 m wide - that's enough room for a cruise ship to pass through! There are also 4 smaller sections at the sides of the river. Looking upstream, the gates between these piers are down under the water...



...this gate is up for routine testing purposes...



...and here we are looking downstream so you can see it from the other side.



Joel told us about ITV's new mini series on Sunday and Monday nights. Flood told the story of a storm surge that - coupled with an unusually high spring tide - overcame the barrier and devastated London. It was of course fictional, since the Thames Barrier is properly designed to prevent such a disaster from occurring. But many places around the world, including Myanmar, do not have such protection against flooding.