News about the Greenwich Tier Buoys

The sun sinks behind the twin domes of the ORNC, highlighting a brace of bare trees awaiting the oncoming Spring.  The brilliant sky, now bereft of morning fog, glimmers across the full tide just on the turn.  The vast, empty tideway curls around the Canary Wharf sky scrapers, all awaiting the Chancellor’s budget as the nation reassesses the pickle we are in, the press and telly full of forecasts while the serene Thames circumnavigates the Isle of Dogs in silence – except for the passage of a pair of tugs hauling the City’s waste paperwork down to the downstream terminals.  Joining the momentum, another bright yellow ‘tuglet’ hauls a vast, empty lighter.

The view upstream to Deptford Creek has had its annual refurb of its six buoys where super-liners and aircraft carriers used to move.  ‘London Titan’, now replacing ‘Crossness’, the PLA’s purpose-built mooring tender, has done its annual refit.  A hidden Creek waterway is now missing its prior coaster which used to deliver a daily supply of Essex bright sand from Fingrehoe’s waterside port – their comings and goings sadly missed – although a tug-led lighter squeezes its way up to Norman Road’s new Creekside wharf handling spoil and building materials from the vast east-west super sewer enterprise.

The unusual tidal calm allows space for the local duck and gulls to do their courting as dawn breaks across the expanse of waterway bereft of its historical shipping of old.  It seems ages since the luxury Viking cruise ships, tripper boats and elegant tall ships hit town, crowding our splendid landmarks and piers.

More to report, and thanks for many kind comments to the return of Riverwatch after my broken back incident.