Uber Boats offering a Gravesend/Tilbury to London service this half-term

For a couple of days later this month, Thames Clipper will be offering a service from Tilbury and Gravesend to London, and back again.

From Gravesend, the boat will take 40 minutes to reach Greenwich Peninsula (North Greenwich Pier), or 60 minutes to London Bridge (London Bridge City Pier). The service leaves Gravesend and Tilbury at 9:45am/10am, and returns from London Bridge at 4pm. Tickets need to be booked in advance from here.

Sadly, there’s not an option for a day-trip to Gravesend for Londoners though.

There is potential for the service to become something more regular though, as Gravesham Borough Council has approved plans to sell Gravesend Pier to Thames Clippers.

The oldest surviving cast-iron pier in the world, it was bought from its private owner by the council in 2000, but ended up with higher costs than they expected when the plans for the restaurant and pontoon for the pier fell into trouble. The restaurant lease was forfeited in 2019, giving the council the opportunity to sell the pier to Thames Clippers. The terms of the sale include the continued use of the pontoon by the Gravesend / Tilbury ferry service and public access to the pier.

If Thames Clipper does plan to run more services, then it’ll need more boats, and although not directly related, as it happens, they’ve ordered a couple of new boats.

The new boats are also a hybrid design that will allow the new vessels to operate solely on battery power while in the centre of London, and recharge while using biofuelled power outside of central London.

The technology is not reliant on shore-based charging; the new boats will use excess power from the biofuelled engines to re-charge their batteries for the central London stretch.

The two new boats, currently being built at Wight Shipyard on the Isle of Wight, are set to arrive in autumn 2022 and spring 2023.