Note change of date A coach trip from Whiteknights to the Royal Docks, the Thames Barrier, and Tilbury Port Terminal and Fort is planned for Saturday 16 October 2022. Details will be sent to members.

Our guide, Martin Kaufman, writes:

“The scale of the Royal Victoria Dock, the Royal Albert Dock and the King George V Dock will take your breath away. Devastated by the London Blitz, they revived post Second World War but closed in 1981 for good, due to competition from Tilbury and containerisation. They have been the subject of 40 years of development – still going on, in a stop-start way, some positive and some not so positive, but on our tour we will see an enormous range of building types and attempts to revitalise this part of London. This tour will be of particular interest to anyone interested in urban regeneration and in 20th century architecture of all kinds, and how a derelict area can be brought back to life, step by step.

So long as the weather is fine – over which I have no control! – you should expect some spectacular dockside and riverside panoramas, the best in all the tours of Dockland so far, so please make sure you have plenty of charge in your camera. There will be quite a lot of walking on this tour, so do bring comfortable shoes. It will however all be flat and on hard surfaces.

This is expected to be the penultimate tour of my successive Docklands Tours, ending up next year with Tilbury Docks. Then perhaps I will start all over again for anyone who missed any of them!”