There is a tidal beach at Vauxhall on the South side of the river with views down to Westminster Bridge and the Houses of Parliament and up to Battersea Reach with its power stations and gas works. To the left Vauxhall Bridge spans the Thames on three sturdy buttresses,the traffic rumbling overhead in an unending stream of rushing metal, lights and humanity that never seems to cease night and day.
The river is singular in destination but many tributaries join their waters to flow through the Thames Basin and out towards the North Sea through the disappearing marshes and gravel pits of Gravesend and Tilbury, the last home of the Dartford Warbler, a toe hold in the wastes of scrap yards and pylons. The Tyburn runs down from Marble Arch and emerges from a stygian cave just the other side of the Bridge beneath one of the last old buildings surviving on the north embankment. To the South side of Vauxhall bridge at river level is the outflow of the River Effra, one of the lost rivers of south London, long since covered over and channelled into underground culverts. The rivers name appears above the arched portal. Its tunnel mouth looms like an entrance to the underworld, marked by a strange wooden beacon whose purpose I can only guess at.
