September 2003 Archives

In England, a spring without the Oxford/Cambridge crew race would be like a winter with sunshine. The race is one of the most-watched sporting events in the UK, watched on TV by some 400 million people around the world.

And so on this April day, we've joined a quarter of a million other Londoners along the Thames. Or, at least, that's the theory. In practice, there's simply not enough space along the Thames for a quarter of a million Londoners. London has evolved for river trading and river industry, not river race watching, and throughout much of the city, buildings crowd right up to the edge of the river, leaving little or no space for pedestrians.