Visitors to London can enjoy a very expansive view if they fly over the city on the descent to Heathrow, but your journey to the capital can also allow you to stop and linger in one place and enjoy some spectacular vistas from high places.
There are two ways private London tours can do this. The first is to visit some of London’s best hilltop vantage points, which offer wonderful cityscape views. The second is to take in the views from high above the streets in tall buildings, a cable car, or the London Eye.
High On The Hills
London’s highest natural point above sea level is at Westerham Heights, which is out on the far south-east corner of London on the edge of the countryside, too far for an ideal view. However, there are many great elevated positions much further in.
Greenwich Park offers one of the best of these, by the famous Royal Observatory, with a grand vista of the park below, the Royal Naval College and Maritime Greenwich, as well as the cluster of skyscrapers around Canary Wharf. The observatory itself calls this “the best view in London”.
Others might suggest Parliament Hill on Hampstead Heath should hold that title. At 98 metres above sea level it is not that high, but has a great position overlooking central London.
A marvellous Monument
If you want to try an artificial viewpoint, there are many ways to do this. One of the simplest is to climb the spiral staircase inside Wren’s Monument in the City of London. This tower was completed in 1677 and was co-designed by Sir Christopher Wren, the architect behind St Paul’s Cathedral, commemorating the 1666 Great Fire of London.
The tower is 202 ft (61.6 metres) high, a deliberate measurement as it is 202 ft from the site where the fire began. While this is far from the highest vantage point, it is still a great view in a particularly historic part of the city.
Should you prefer to be a bit higher and feel less exposed by the sheer drop below, the nearby Sky Garden in 20 Fenchurch Street, a skyscraper colloquially known as the Walkie Talkie, could be just the place to go.
This is London’s highest public garden, so you can enjoy superb views alongside the enjoyment of the floral blooms. This is free to visit, although you can also enjoy dining with a view.
The Highest Of All
If you want to go to the highest place of all, the Shard, London’s tallest skyscraper, offers the loftiest view, with the open-air platform being 72 floors up (don’t worry, there are glass windows so you won’t fall!). This features a 360-degree vista, so you can spot landmarks all over London and even look way out into the countryside beyond on a clear day.
Moving Experiences
You may need quite a head for heights if you are climbing a tall building like this, although there is more than one way to do it. While a skyscraper remains steady, you could also enjoy a movable viewpoint by having a ride on the London Eye, which takes around an hour to complete one rotation and offers the most superb view of central London.
Alternatively, if you are truly fearless, you can try the cable cars across the Thames between Greenwich and the Royal Docks. This has always required a good head for heights at the best of times, but now a new service has been launched, the IFS Cloud Cable car.
Not only does this reach as high as 90 metres above the Thames, but it has a glass bottom, so you really have the most superlative, uninterrupted view. Among the notable sites are the O2 Arena, the Shard and the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park, home of the 2012 games.
Talking of the Olympic Park, this includes the ArcelorMittal Orbit, a tower that features its 360-degree viewing platform at 80 metres up and, for the young or young-at-heart, the highest and longest tunnel slide in the world.
Those Hills Have History
If all this really is enough to make you go weak at the knees, those viewing points on hills may be even more appealing. Indeed, you may also appreciate the historic significance of them as vantage points of great importance.
After all, it was the elevated position of the hill in Greenwich that made it a great place for an observatory, while Parliament Hill gets its name as it was a lookout point for Royalist forces in the English Civil War. You don’t just get great views in such places; you get to enjoy places where history was made.
Be it from a hill, tower, or glass-bottomed cable car, the views you see will inspire you to explore even more of one of the world’s most wonderful cities.
