A Riverside Pub Walk from Wapping to Canary Wharf: Four Historic Pubs in Eleven Stops

One of 20 self-guided London walks on this site. See every walk, from the South Bank to Hampstead Heath.

Wapping has the oldest riverside pubs in London, and the usual way to see them is to follow the Thames Path signs, which spend long stretches between blocks of flats with the river somewhere behind a wall.

This route is built around the pubs instead. Four of them, west to east: the Town of Ramsgate beside Wapping Old Stairs, the Captain Kidd in a former coffee warehouse, the Prospect of Whitby with its pewter bar, and The Grapes on Narrow Street. In between it uses the water the docks left behind — the Ornamental Canal through the middle of Wapping, Shadwell Basin, Tideway’s new riverside park and Limehouse Basin — and finishes at Canary Wharf. Eleven stops, just over 6km, three to four hours. Everything between the pubs is free.

For the rest of both areas, see the Wapping area guide and the Canary Wharf area guide.

💡 The Short Version: Four pubs, at stops 3, 4, 6 and 10. None of the four pubs opens before 11am, and only the Prospect of Whitby opens then — the other three open at noon, so start about 11.30. Walk it on a Saturday for Wapping Docklands Market at stop 7, 10am to 5pm, the only day it runs. The Grapes takes no table bookings at any time; the Town of Ramsgate books diners but not drinkers. Hours and kitchen times here were checked with each pub on 13 September 2026.

The route

Open the whole route in Google Maps → — all eleven stops in walking order, set to walking directions, which is the version to put on your phone.

1. St Katharine Docks

A working marina two minutes from the Tower. Thomas Telford built it in the 1820s; now it is yachts, a lock onto the Thames and a ring of restaurants.

It is free and never closes. Walk through the basins to the east side and leave by St Katharine’s Way.

2. Spirit Quay

The Ornamental Canal at Spirit Quay.

A row of gabled brick houses built in the 1980s along the filled-in London Docks, facing a strip of still water where the docks used to be. It is five minutes east of St Katharine Docks, and the first sight of the canal you come back to at stop 5.

These are homes, not a sight, so there is nothing to enter. Cut south from here onto Wapping High Street.

3. The Town of Ramsgate

62 Wapping High Street, beside Wapping Old Stairs. The pub dates its founding to 1545 and reckons there was an ale house on the site in the 1460s. It is the only historic pub left on a street that had up to twenty of them at the start of the twentieth century.

Open noon to 11pm Monday to Saturday and noon to 10.30pm on Sunday. The kitchen runs noon to 4pm and 5pm to 9pm every day, Sunday included. It takes bookings for diners only, not for drinks, up to six people online, and deliberately keeps most tables free for walk-ins.

Inside is one narrow room running back from the bar to a small riverside terrace, which arrived with extensions built between the 1950s and the 1980s.

Next door, Wapping Old Stairs drop to the foreshore, and at low tide you can still see the post that condemned pirates were chained to, to drown as the tide came up over them. The notorious Judge Jeffreys was caught outside the pub in 1688, trying to leave the country disguised as a sailor.

4. The Captain Kidd

108 Wapping High Street, five minutes east. A nineteenth-century brick house remodelled in the Edwardian era and Grade II listed, a coffee warehouse until it became a pub in the 1980s — named after William Kidd, the pirate executed at Execution Dock along this reach in 1701.

It is the tall one. You go in under a large archway into a space laid out to feel like a ship’s hulk, and the pub runs up three floors, with a terrace overlooking the river.

Open noon to 11pm Monday to Saturday and noon to 10.30pm on Sunday. The kitchen runs noon to 3pm and 5pm to 9pm on weekdays, straight through from noon to 9pm on Saturday, and noon to 6pm on Sunday — the earliest Sunday kitchen of the four. It takes table bookings online.

It is a Samuel Smith’s pub, so everything behind the bar is Samuel Smith’s, the cask Old Brewery Bitter comes from oak casks in the cellar, and the brewery’s house rules apply: no televisions, no background music, and no phones or laptops.

5. The Ornamental Canal

Looking towards Tobacco Dock.

The quietest fifteen minutes in east London, and the stretch that makes this a walk rather than a pub crawl. The canal was laid out in the 1980s along the line of the London Docks, so it goes nowhere and exists only to be walked beside.

Wapping Woods runs alongside it, and Tobacco Dock faces the canal too — both are among the three detours below, if you want ten minutes under the trees or a proper look at the warehouse frontage rather than a glance in passing. The canal ends at Shadwell Basin, the last large piece of open dock water in Wapping.

6. The Prospect of Whitby

Follow Wapping Wall along the south side of Shadwell Basin, past the old Hydraulic Power Station, to Pelican Stairs.

Photo: Christine Matthews, CC BY-SA 2.0.

It dates itself to 1520 and calls itself the oldest riverside tavern in the country. The original flagstone floor survives, and so does a rare pewter-topped bar, with old barrels and ships’ masts built into the structure around it. There are river views from the beer garden and from a first-floor balcony and terrace, and a replica gallows on the river wall marking the executions along this reach.

Open 11am to 11pm Monday to Saturday and noon to 10pm on Sunday, with food from noon to 9pm every day. It is the only one of the four pubs open before noon, and its kitchen has no afternoon break, so it works as a late lunch as well as a mid-walk pint. It takes table bookings.

7. Wapping Docklands Market

Back past the power station, on Brussels Wharf at the edge of Shadwell Basin.

Saturdays only, 10am to 5pm. Fresh produce, independent stalls, street food, drink and live music, with tables looking over the water. It lands at almost exactly halfway, which is why Saturday is the day to walk this.

8. King Edward Memorial Park Foreshore

Across the red Glamis Road bridge from the market.

London’s newest riverside space, opened by Tideway at the end of July 2026 on top of the super sewer works that replaced one of the river’s worst sewage overflows.

It adds 2,600 square metres to King Edward Memorial Park: terraces stepping down to the river, a long timber bench around the lowest one, planting and a wider Thames Path through the park. The views are south across the river, and six bronze boats by Hew Locke, a series called Cargoes, lead from the foreshore back into the park.

⚠️ Part of it floods by design. On higher tides the river overtops the wall onto the western end of the lower walkway. Tideway calls that the chance to dip your toes in the Thames; if you are here at high water, it means using the upper terrace.

9. Limehouse Basin

Where the Regent’s Canal reaches the Thames. Once the busiest freight interchange in London, it is now a marina ringed with flats, with narrowboats and yachts side by side.

Walk the south side to the lock, where the basin drops to the river, and come out on Narrow Street.

10. Narrow Street and The Grapes

The fourth pub, and the one people come to Limehouse for. The Grapes at number 76 is a Victorian long bar — panelled dado, burgundy walls, oil paintings — opening into the Dickens Snug, named for a patron who put the pub into Our Mutual Friend and is said to have danced on the tables in it. Sir Ian McKellen is the leaseholder and a director of the company that runs it. Out the back, a small heated terrace hangs over the Thames; upstairs, a first-floor drinking room with Canary Wharf to the left and the City to the right.

Open noon to 11pm Monday to Saturday and noon to 10.30pm on Sunday. The bar menu is served downstairs and on the deck. It takes no table reservations at any time, so plan around that on this walk: come on a weekday, or come early. Monday is quiz night from 8pm, and no under-18s are allowed in at any hour.

Two more places on the same stretch, in walking order:

• Bread Street Kitchen & Bar at number 44, by the lock. This is the building that was The Narrow, and it now trades under the Gordon Ramsay brand. Open from 11.30am daily; it closes at 9pm Monday to Wednesday, 10pm Thursday to Saturday and 8pm on Sunday.
• La Figa at 45, an Italian. Noon to 11pm on weekdays, from 1pm at weekends.

Ropemakers Fields is the small park behind the Grapes, with play areas and tennis courts. Cut through it to leave Narrow Street for the last leg.

11. Into Canary Wharf

Crossrail Place and Canary Wharf.

About 1.5km: past Westferry Circus and along the dock edge to Crossrail Place, whose free roof garden sits on top of the Elizabeth line station.

It is also stop 1 of our Canary Wharf to Greenwich walk, which carries on south through the docks and under the Thames by the Greenwich Foot Tunnel. Walk both and you have gone from the Tower to Greenwich hill, above the Prime Meridian (the Royal Observatory’s courtyard is closed from 2 November 2026).

The detours: Wapping Woods, Tobacco Dock and the Yurt Café

Three places worth five minutes each, none of them on the direct line.

Wapping Woods is the wood the canal runs beside at stop 5 — planted on the filled-in dock, with benches by the water and paths that wander in among the trees instead of sticking to the towpath. Free, open at all times and almost always empty. Worth the five minutes if you want to walk under the trees instead of staying on the straight path beside the water.

Tobacco Dock is a Grade I listed warehouse built in 1812 for imported tobacco, brick vaults below and a timber and iron roof above, now an events venue. The canal runs along its south side at stop 5, so you pass the outside whatever you do, and it opens to the public only for public events, which it lists on its own site. Worth the five minutes if there is an event on, or you want to walk the full length of the frontage and look at the brickwork.

The Yurt Café is a café inside an actual Mongolian yurt, in the grounds of the Royal Foundation of St Katharine on Butcher Row — five minutes north of the river between stops 8 and 9, and not St Katharine Docks at stop 1. The charity has been on that site since 1950, opened the café in 2016 and runs it as a social enterprise: a full English, focaccias, soups and Mission Coffee Works espresso. From April it also opens 5 to 8pm, Monday to Saturday, with curry on Mondays, burgers on Tuesdays, pizza Wednesday to Saturday and live music on the outdoor stage on Thursdays. Worth the five minutes if you are walking with children, or you want the only cheap, non-pub meal on the route.

Where to eat

The four pubs are the walk, and between them they cover noon to late:

• The Town of Ramsgate (stop 3, ££) — kitchen noon to 4pm and 5pm to 9pm, seven days.
• The Captain Kidd (stop 4, ££) — kitchen noon to 3pm and 5pm to 9pm on weekdays, noon to 9pm on Saturday, noon to 6pm on Sunday.
• The Prospect of Whitby (stop 6, ££) — food noon to 9pm, seven days, with no afternoon gap.
• The Grapes (stop 10, ££) — no bookings, so it is first come. A bar menu downstairs and on the deck.

On a Saturday, the market at stop 7 is street food with seating over Shadwell Basin, at almost exactly halfway. The cheapest meal on the route is the Yurt Café detour. A full dinner means Bread Street Kitchen & Bar or La Figa on Narrow Street.

For more, the area guides cover both ends: Wapping and Canary Wharf.

The best day to go

Saturday. All four pubs are open, the Captain Kidd’s kitchen runs straight through from noon to 9pm, and the market only happens that day.

What closes: Wapping Docklands Market runs on Saturdays only. On Sunday the Prospect of Whitby shuts at 10pm and the other three pubs at 10.30pm, the Captain Kidd’s kitchen stops at 6pm and Bread Street Kitchen & Bar at 8pm. The Yurt Café’s evening service runs Monday to Saturday, from April. Tobacco Dock is closed to the public except during public events.

What does not care what day it is: the docks, the canal, Wapping Woods, the new foreshore, Limehouse Basin, Ropemakers Fields and Canary Wharf, which make up most of the distance. All four pubs open every day of the week.

The case for a weekday: the Grapes takes no bookings at all, and a quiet weekday afternoon is the only time you can count on its deck over the river. You will have Tideway’s new foreshore almost to yourself too.

On time of day: none of the four pubs opens before 11am, and only the Prospect of Whitby opens then. The other three open at noon. Start at about 11.30 and you reach the Town of Ramsgate as it unlocks, the market at lunchtime and Narrow Street mid-afternoon.

Getting there and back

Start: Tower Hill (District, Circle) or Tower Gateway (DLR), both about five minutes from St Katharine Docks.

Finish: Canary Wharf (Elizabeth line, Jubilee, DLR). The Elizabeth line is back in the City in about six minutes.

Cutting it short: Wapping (Overground) is on the High Street between stops 4 and 5; Shadwell (Overground, DLR) is north of stop 6; Limehouse (DLR, c2c) is by stop 9 and the Yurt Café detour; Westferry (DLR) is on the last leg.

Walked the other way, it works just as well, but this direction finishes on the doorstep of the walk to Greenwich.

Carry on walking

• Canary Wharf to Greenwich — starts at Crossrail Place, where this one ends. Carry on under the river.
• City of London: Bank to Tower Bridge — ends at St Katharine Docks, so walk it first.
• South Bank: Westminster to Tower Bridge — ends at Tower Bridge, beside St Katharine Docks.

What to do with the rest of the day

• Canary Wharf to Greenwich: eleven more stops, starting where this one ends.
• The Wapping area guide: Turner’s Old Star, Brunel’s Thames Tunnel and the warehouse conversions this route walks past without stopping.
• The Canary Wharf area guide: Eden Dock, the floating pool and Wood Wharf.
• Canal walks in London: the Regent’s Canal ends at stop 9, and you can walk it back to Little Venice.
• Walks along the Thames: the river path the rest of the way.
• The South Bank walk: Westminster to Tower Bridge, which ends five minutes from where this one starts.
• The best areas to visit in London — the neighbourhoods compared by what each is best for, how long it takes and the best day to go.