Thanksgiving in London

Date post added: 26th October 2023

A Thanksgiving Day that’s at the helm of history.

The Mayflower set sail from south London (Rotherhithe). The Captain of the Mayflower was Christopher Jones. He’s buried in the church there. And the statue that commemorates him there is… Well, once seen, never forgotten. And rightly so because had it not been for Christopher Jones the Pilgrims never would have made it across the Atlantic.

To cut to the chase, there’s no better way to mark Thanksgiving than to go on Robert’s Thames Sightseeing Tour, which ends in Rotherhithe. Indeed, ends at Rotherhithe’s crown jewel: The Mayflower, the ancient riverside pub.

Robert’s going to retool and repurpose his Thames Sightseeing, Brunel’s River Cruise Tour for the occasion. Fit it up with lots of Thanksgiving trimmings. Including, of course, the (optional) lunch afterward at The Mayflower – looking out at the very waters where the ship weighed anchor and set off on its world-changing voyage.

Not to put too fine a point on it, this one’s not cut from the same cloth as every other Thanksgiving Day. When you look back across the long march of a lifetime of Thanksgiving Days past, this will be the one that isn’t part of the blur – the one you’ll always remember. The one you’ll have a lot to be thankful for, including the nonpareil bragging rights it’ll set you up with!


David Tucker

The doyen of London walking tour guides, David is the Seigneur of this favoured realm (London Walks). A literary historian and retreaded academic (London University Ph.D. on Dickens) and former television news editor, he broods over words, breeds enthusiasms and is "unmanageable." For good measure, he's a balterer, a logophile and a lifelong thanatophobe.

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