London in a Day: Barton-on-Sea → Winchester → Tower Hill, the Ritz & a Thames River Tour
A perfectly paced London day tour (with history at every stop)
Some days just flow. This one began in Barton-on-Sea, collected a second couple in Winchester, and rolled into London for a classic circuit: Houses of Parliament, Buckingham Palace, a celebratory lunch at the Ritz, then down to Tower Hill for a hop-on hop-off Thames boat—all on a smooth wait-and-return with the same driver and vehicle throughout. That continuity is the difference: your coats stay in the car, timings flex around you, and there’s no wrestling with bags between cabs or stations. It’s private hire the way it should be—licensed, insured, and built around your day.
The photo was taken at Tower Hill, where London’s layers of history sit side-by-side: the Tower itself, Trinity Square Gardens, and the Thames—your launch point for a river tour. Commentary on the boats is famously entertaining; many of the crew come from a long line of Thames Watermen, a tradition regulated on the river since the 1555 Act of Parliament and celebrated annually with the Doggett’s Coat and Badge race, the world’s oldest continuous rowing contest (est. 1715) . It’s a living craft and you hear it in the patter—knowledge of currents, bridges, and landmarks delivered with that unmistakable London humour.
Step back from the pier into Trinity Square Gardens and you’ll find the Tower Hill Memorial, which commemorates merchant seafarers lost at sea in both world wars. The Second World War extension (1955) includes two sentry-like stone figures—an officer and a seaman—by sculptor Charles Wheeler, standing quietly among the names of those with no grave but the sea . It’s a poignant pause before you rejoin the river.