Putney Embankment, the best free spot to watch the start of the Boat Race, has reopened after months of closure for super sewer handover work.
The riverside path is now open and will stay that way right up to race day on Saturday 4 April, when Oxford and Cambridge line up at the university stone roughly halfway along the embankment. For anyone who has never watched from here: this is the spot. You can practically count the blades going into the water.
The embankment had been fenced off since late last year, not for construction but for something arguably more frustrating: paperwork. The contractor that built the Thames Tideway tunnel has been working through a long sequence of tests, inspections and sign-offs before Thames Water can take operational control. On Friday morning, a group of workers in high-vis were out on scaffolding bolted to the outside of the structure, running what they hoped were among the final checks.
The site supervisor, philosophical about the drawn-out process, told Putney.news that the crew were keen to finish the testing so they could “get on with building elsewhere.” He provided an expletive to stress the sentiment that they want it over and done as much as residents do.
After the Boat Race, the embankment will close again for roughly one more month while the handover is completed. Once Thames Water takes over, that should be it.
This is the third chapter of a story we have been following since December, when wire fencing first appeared around the riverside park. By the end of that month, the closure had stretched well beyond what residents were told to expect.
Now, at least, there is a clear end in sight. And the timing could not be better: the Boat Race is a week today.
