During our London tour we take our clients across twelve bridges over the River Thames. Our lunch stop is at a pub from which you can see three of them at a glance.

Many of our overseas visitors first glimpsed the River Thames on television during H.M Queen's Diamond Jubilee last June marking her 60 years as monarch. This wonderful pageant ran for 4 hours along a 7 mile stretch of the river Thames.

Over 900 boats of all sizes and shapes passed the Royal barge called the Spirit of Chartwell. That was the largest assembly of ships in 350 years and featured 10 musical barges which despite the pouring rain played and sang their hearts out! The procession of ships went from Battersea bridge to Tower bridge passing the Royal barge where the Royal family stood saluting, waving and smiling all the time.

M Another aspect of the River Thames is the varied and fascinating bird population that inhabit it. The largest bird is the mute swan and on behalf of the Crown each summer a " swan census" is conducted to monitor them. This census dates back to the 12th century and is conducted to check their health,the number of birds and breeding habits. The census is called "Swan Upping" and takes place over 5 days being supervised by H.M. Queen's official Swan Master.Volunteers from many of the ancient guilds shepherd the swans and pen them into a safe position using their rowing boats.This requires skill and patience to enable the swans to be removed for a veterinary health check plus leg tagging prior to being carefully released. You can watch a great video about Swan Upping  here.