In the tunnel

One of the questions in Friday's quiz as we passed Greenwich and the domed entrance to the foot-tunnel was: there are three places where you can walk under the river in London, one is Greenwich what are the other two? The answer: Woolwich and Rotherhithe. the latter is better-known as a vehicle tunnel and a lot of people don't even realise that you can walk through it. But there's a narrow pavement along each side and three of us braved it today.
It's 1600 yards (just under a mile long) and snakes its way beneath the river. It was opened in 1908 and so originally designed for horse-drawn vehicles - hence the bends; to prevent the horses from seeing the light at the other end and bolting. Its used by over 30,000 vehicles a day but only about 20 people a day venture to walk through. Were there 17 others apart from us today, I wondered. We'd picked a Sunday morning as we thought the traffic would be lighter but there were still a lot of cars although no lorries. It took us around 30 minutes to walk through and we were certainly glad to get out into the fresh air at the other end.
This picture is taken under one of the ventilation shafts (so we can't have been under the river at the time!) which used to be a pedestrian entrance to the tunnel but was closed after bomb damage in the war. The spiral steps are still there but gated off so you can't walk up.
And in case you think it was the quiz that inspired us to do this I must just add that this was a trip we had planned for a while so the question was just a co-incidence.