Crossing the Thames - No 4 Canada Water to Canary Wharf using the Jubilee Line - Friday 25th April 2014

So number four crossing today, however it really means crossing the Thames three times to get me from EC2 to SE9. First of all there's Tower Bridge to cross to get to the south side and the onward walk to Canada Water (somewhere I've never been to before - last time I went to Decathlon, Canada Water did not exist and I used Surrey Quays on the old East London Line) and back cross to the south side via the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. I will cover off the Greenwich Foot Tunnel on a future Blog, as for Tower Bridge I did that one first on 4th April, my have to re-visit!

I approached Canada Water from Surrey Quays Road passing the impressive Surrey Commercial Dock's Superindents' Building, site of a huge fire following the first German raid of the blitz on 7th September 1940.

Surrey Commercial Dock's Superindents' Building

I was quite taken aback by the size of Canada Water transport hub which includes the Jubilee Line, Overground and Buses. I had seen this previously, well the roof, whilst walking from Rotherhithe Station the other week, and whilst I thought it was most probably a Bus Station I had no idea it was in fact Canada Water. I was really surprised how close Canada Water is to Rotherhithe station.

The second surprise was that the hub had toilets, which lead me onto not surprised to find the them locked, and I that point I need them as I had had a couple of drinks before leaving work, oh well I had to hold on a little longer.

The third and biggest surprise was the size of the Station itself, its massive a huge circular hole in the ground with a glass and metal 'lid'. All of the stations on the Jubilee Line extension are of huge proportions, all concrete and glass and very impressive with it.

I descended the first set of escalators to the first concourse which houses the Overground Railway platforms, these were very busy with passengers waiting to get on the trains, why I'm not to sure. There's a lot of residential properties granted, but commercial office buildings there's none as far as I could see, maybe people just want to get away from Rotherhithe or maybe they had all been shopping in the Surrey Quays Shopping Centre.

The escalator to the Jubilee Line was under going maintenance so I had to use the stairs to get to the Jubilee platforms. In common with all the stations on the Jubilee Line extension the platform edges are protected by a glass wall with automatic doors lining up with the train doors. As a result of this I was unable to film the trains entering the tunnel so the next best thing was to film the actual journey, which I duly did. It looks as if the the chap sitting on the left hand seat has clocked me!

A short video of the journey on the tube

The journey took about two minutes to arrive at Canary Wharf, which is another huge station even bigger than Canada Water but then it is in the centre of the docklands development. There's two exits from Canary Wharf station and I had to make sure I took the right one to ensure I was at the South Dock end and not Canada Square end.

Up escalator Canary Wharf

The huge Canary Wharf Station

From Canary Wharf I made for Island Gardens and the Greenwich Foot Tunnel arriving home at 20:30 but not after pointing out to a couple of tourists in Greenwich Park where the meridian was.