Cruise to Hampton Court
 

I will be in London in May and was considering taking a boat to Hampton Court (and taking the train back). Is this is a good way to spend four hours? Or do you think it is better to take the train both ways and use the time saved to do something else? Altogether I will have about 4 days in London.
Thanks!

4 hours total? Won't be enough time. Normally I would recommend the boat trip as it's nice. With only 4 days in London, I think it would be more efficient use of your time to train it both ways. Its really easy (Victoria?) and then you can have good amount of time at Hampton Court. The palace is facinating and the grounds are beautiful. It would be a good half day visit, (and I'm not one to stick around places).

4 hours is barely enough time to do HCP even going both directions by train. 30+ mins to the Palace, walk to the Palace, 2.5 hours at the Palace, walk back to the station, 30+ mins back on the train. So, no 4 hours won't work if you want to go by river.

Second - if you DO decide to take a boat, don't take it to HCP, take the train to Hampton Court, and the boat back. reason being - it is quite a long boat ride and if you go up river you will not get to HCP until well after lunch time.

But if you take a boat back you are looking at about 7 hours minimum - - - -

I meant four hours just for the boat ride. Sorry for the confusion! So, I think, taking the train both ways will save @ 2.5 - 3 hours. But the boat ride definitely does appeal to me . . .
I guess I just need to know if the boat is "worth" the extra time.

Hi BP- I asked the same question last year when I was contemplating about this. In the end, I decided against it. It was quite a long cruise and from the responses I got, it's not that scenic.

With just 4 days in London, that certainly should not be your top priority.

HCP itself warrants a full day. On my last trip, I spent 6 hours there (including a brief stop for lunch).

oh - it is a very scenic/interesting trip. But not so good unless you have a nice day for it.

Go to the palace by train and if it is a pleasant day, you can always decide to take the boat back into town. How long the trip takes depends a lot on the tides - the Thames is tidal beyond HCP . . .

You should also be able to take the boat from Hampton Court to Richmond - which will take you past the prettiest, if not necessarily particularly interesting, bits - and get a train back to Waterloo from there. The station is about 5-10 minutes walk from where the boats stop at Richmond.

For a longer boat trip, you could go on to Kew Bridge, but the train service from there is less frequent than from Richmond.

We thought the cruise was very pleasant and well worth. But as others have said, take the train to HCP (that's upriver and against the current so the boat trip to HCP can take twice as long as the trip back). We did what Patrick suggests and it worked very well.

&quot;<i>the boat trip to HCP can take twice as long as the trip back</i>&quot;

One would think so, but you really can't tell about that. Yes, there is the down river current, but there is also the tide to contend w/. So the trips up and down river can be longer or shorter depending on conditions that day.

I did this back when we lived in London. Frankly, although I like rivers, boats and English history, I found the journey endless. If you want to get out on the river I'd suggest the much shorter ride to Greenwich.

The journey by boat between Westminster and Hampton Court can be as little as two and a quarter hours with a favourable tide or four hours with an adverse tide. The problem is that for parts of the journey, the river is very shallow at low tide so the boats have to go very slowly.
If you have a specific date, I can look up the tide tables and give an estimate of the journey time.

We found the boat trip from Richmond to Hampton Court Palace one of the highlights of our most recent visit to Britain. And everybody else on the boat was pretty happy also. Nice being carried gently along past pubs and houses with boats tied up in front and greening parks and trees.

You do want good weather for this; May is the perfect time of year.