The Queen's Walk: Westminster to Tower Bridge on foot
The stretch of path between Westminster Bridge and Tower Bridge is called the Queen's Walk, it is three miles long, and it contains more free things to do than any comparable distance in Britain. Most visitors walk about a third of it, photograph the London Eye, and turn round. This is the whole thing, in one direction, east, with the sun behind you for the second half.
- Distance
- 3 miles
- Time
- 4 to 6 hours with stops
- Start
- Westminster Bridge, south end
- End
- Tower Bridge
- Cost
- Free, or about £56 if you buy the two tickets
- Best for
- A first visit, a rainy day, and anyone with one afternoon
12 min readChecked
Walk it west to east, and start later than you think
Two rules. Go east, because the light is behind you all afternoon and every landmark you photograph is lit rather than backlit. And start at two, not at ten, because the best bits of this walk are the last bits and you want to reach Tower Bridge at blue hour rather than in the middle of the afternoon.
The whole thing is flat, paved, step-free apart from a couple of bridge approaches, and never more than five minutes from a toilet, a coffee or a way back onto the Underground. It is the easiest serious walk in London.
The route, stop by stop
Westminster Bridge, south end
Westminster Bridge Road SE1 · free
Start on the south side, by St Thomas' Hospital, and shoot back across at the Elizabeth Tower. Everyone else is standing on the north side shooting into the sun. This is the same photograph, correctly lit, with a third of the people.
5 minute walk
County Hall and the London Eye
Riverside Building SE1 7PB · Eye from £29 online, £39 on the day
The Eye takes thirty minutes and goes round once. It is genuinely good at dusk and a waste of money at noon, when the queue is longer than the ride and the glare kills every photograph. If you are not riding it, walk underneath it and look up through the spokes, which is the better picture anyway.
4 minute walk inland
Leake Street Arches
Leake Street SE1 7NN · open 24 hours, free
A 300 metre road tunnel under the platforms of Waterloo station where painting the walls is legal and actively encouraged. It is repainted constantly, so it is never the same twice and there is almost always someone working in there with a spray can and a ladder. Eight of the arches off it are now independent bars and restaurants, and The Vaults does immersive theatre. Twenty minutes, and for most people it is the best twenty minutes of the day.
6 minute walk back to the river
Jubilee Gardens and the Golden Jubilee Bridges
Belvedere Road SE1 · free
Two footbridges, one either side of the Hungerford rail bridge, opened in 2002 because the old walkway was a single narrow strip bolted to the side of a railway. Walk out to the middle of the downstream one for the view east: Waterloo Bridge, Somerset House, St Paul's and the City in a single line.
6 minute walk
Southbank Centre and the Undercroft
Belvedere Road SE1 8XX · free
Underneath the Queen Elizabeth Hall is a patch of concrete that the architects left open in the 1960s and that skaters took over in 1973. It has a claim to being the oldest continuously used skate spot in the world, it was nearly redeveloped in 2013, and the skaters won. Stand and watch for ten minutes. It is free, it is loud, and it is one of the few things on this river that is not a visitor attraction.
3 minute walk
South Bank Book Market
Under Waterloo Bridge, Queen's Walk SE1 · free
Eight stalls of second-hand books under the arch of Waterloo Bridge, running since July 1983 and part of the Southbank Centre since 2001. Paperbacks, comics, antiquarian maps and prints. Not every stall opens every day and it shuts in serious rain or when there is a premiere at the BFI, so treat it as a bonus rather than a plan.
2 minute walk
BFI Southbank and the National Theatre
Upper Ground SE1 9PX · free to walk into
Both are free to enter and both have bars that are open to anyone, not just ticket holders. The National Theatre is the best brutalist building in London and the terraces on the upper levels are public. Go up. Nobody stops you.
7 minute walk
Gabriel's Wharf and the OXO Tower
Barge House Street SE1 9PH · free
Small craft units and a scruffier bit of riverside that the redevelopment has not flattened yet. The OXO Tower next door has letters cut into the windows as advertising, because the landlord was refused permission for a sign, and that is why they spell OXO. The eighth floor viewing gallery is free and public.
9 minute walk
Tate Modern
Bankside SE1 9TG · Sun to Thu 10am to 6pm, Fri and Sat 10am to 9pm · collection free
A power station by Giles Gilbert Scott, who also designed Battersea and the red telephone box. The permanent collection is free, the big exhibitions are not. On now: Frida Kahlo until 3 January 2027 and Ana Mendieta until 17 January 2027. Level 10 of the Blavatnik Building, now a drinks space, looks straight at St Paul's for the price of a coffee.
2 minute walk
Millennium Bridge and St Paul's
Free to cross · cathedral £27 adult
Stand in the middle of the bridge, get low, and let the cables lead into the dome. That is the shot. The cathedral itself is £27, which buys the floor, the crypt and all three dome galleries, 528 steps to the top. Every Sunday until 25 October 2026 there is a Dome Only ticket between 12.30pm and 2pm for £13.50, which is the same climb for half the money.
10 minute walk back over and east
Shakespeare's Globe
21 New Globe Walk SE1 9DT · tour £30, standing tickets £5 to £10
The guided tour is £30 and 50 minutes. The better answer is a yard ticket to an actual performance for £5 to £10, standing, in the open air, exactly as it was done. It is the cheapest world-class thing you can do in London and almost nobody tells visitors it exists.
8 minute walk
Borough Market
8 Southwark Street SE1 1TL · closed Mondays, most traders wind down 5pm to 6pm
Closed on Mondays, which catches people out constantly. If you started at two you are arriving as it thins out, which is the pleasant version. Buy for tonight rather than queuing for lunch.
12 minute walk
Shad Thames and Tower Bridge
Free to walk across · the upper walkways are ticketed
Cross to the middle of Tower Bridge, then carry on to the Butler's Wharf side and look back with the old warehouse walkways in frame. That is the better photograph and it is the one people miss because they stop on the north bank. Thirty minutes after sunset, and you are done.
The bridges, in order, and which ones to walk
Eight crossings sit on this three miles and they are not equal. If you only cross twice, cross at Golden Jubilee going out and Millennium coming back.
- Westminster Bridge
- Cross for the photograph
- Golden Jubilee Bridges
- Walk the downstream one
- Waterloo Bridge
- Worth a detour
- Blackfriars
- Skip on foot
- Millennium Bridge
- Cross it
- Southwark Bridge
- Skip
- London Bridge
- Skip
- Tower Bridge
- Cross it and come back
Painted green to match the Commons benches
Best single view east on the river
The only place you see St Paul's and Westminster at once
The station is built on the bridge and has a platform over the water, which is worth a look if you are passing through
It swayed on its opening day in June 2000, earned the name the Wobbly Bridge, and shut for almost two years while 89 dampers were fitted
Traffic
This is the plain one. The pretty one is Tower Bridge, and mixing them up is the oldest mistake in London
Free at road level. The high walkways are a separate ticket
Roupell Street, and why to detour
Two minutes inland from Waterloo, between Cornwall Road and Hatfields, is a street of early nineteenth century workers' cottages that survived everything. No front gardens, no through traffic, no modern infill. It is a conservation area and it is used constantly as a film location because it is one of the only streets in central London where a camera can point down it and see nothing built after 1830.
It takes eight minutes to walk down and back. Do it on the way to Leake Street, not as a separate trip, and have a pint at the Kings Arms on the corner while you are there.
What it costs
With your own guide
Private day, your itinerary
You tell us what the day is for. We build it. Up to 8 hours.
- Up to 5 people
- £340
- 6 to 8 people
- £480
Want a tailor-made London trip? Tell us who’s coming and what you’d love to see. Request your personalised quote
What else you will spend
Rough, and on the day, whether you come with us or not.
- Travel
- Nothing
- Tickets
- £0 to £56
- Lunch
- £12 to £18
- Coffee
- £3 to £5
It is one walk, end to end, and every bridge is free
Free for the whole route. A Globe yard ticket is £5, St Paul's £27, the Eye £29 booked online
Borough Market, or the Leake Street arches
Anywhere on the South Bank between the BFI and Gabriel's Wharf
What people get wrong here
- Riding the London Eye at midday. Thirty minutes of glare and a queue longer than the ride. Dusk or not at all.
- Doing Borough Market on a Monday, when it is shut.
- Walking west to east in the morning, which puts the sun in every photograph for the whole second half.
- Stopping at the Tate. Two-thirds of the good stuff is east of it.
- Paying for the Globe tour when a standing ticket to a real performance costs a fifth of it.
Questions people actually ask
How long is the Queen's Walk on the South Bank?
About three miles from Westminster Bridge to Tower Bridge. Walked straight through it takes just over an hour. With the stops on this route it fills four to six hours.
Is Leake Street tunnel free and is it legal?
Both. It is open 24 hours a day, there is no entrance fee, and painting the walls is legal and encouraged. The arches off it house bars and restaurants that keep normal hours.
What is free on the South Bank?
The path itself, Leake Street, the Undercroft skate space, the South Bank Book Market, the National Theatre and BFI public areas, the OXO Tower viewing gallery, the Tate Modern collection, and every bridge at road level.
Is the London Eye worth it?
At dusk, yes. At midday, no. It is from £29 booked online and £39 on the day, it lasts thirty minutes, and the view is better in low light. Tate Modern’s Level 10, for the price of a coffee, covers a lot of the same ground.
Which is better, Tower Bridge or London Bridge?
Tower Bridge is the famous one with the two towers and the blue walkways. London Bridge is the plain concrete one upstream. Visitors confuse them constantly and it is the single most common London mistake.