Drinkable Rivers Thames Walk

Starting during rivers week, Li An Phoa and team will walk the entire length of the River Thames, an undertaking that will span a month and nearly 400km! 

Li An began river walks over a decade ago, inspired by returning to the first river she canoed - the Rupert in Canada - to find that the river quality had deteriorated so rapidly in the 3 years since she first visited that she could no longer drink the water. 

What followed is an inspiring decade of walking rivers across the world, using citizen science to test quality along some of the globe's major waterways, whilst engaging locals along the way. 

Li An and team will be passing through Surrey on October 5th, and as ZERO's own citizen science water quality team works with Water Rangers and the River Wey Trust, we will be joining them for the stretch of walk where our own Wey meets the Thames. 

You are welcome to join at any point in the day, and return based on where train stations or transport make it easiest for you. We'll likely join at Weybridge, and head back from Hampton Court. Bring a sharing lunch, and join for what you can manage. See how Drinkable Rivers and ZERO run their citizen science water testing, and listen to inspiring stories from Li An's adventures over 13 years of river walks - she even met her partner Maarten when he joined a walk as a journalist to interview her! 

You can see more info on the full details of the Thames Walk here. 

NOTE: We will email attendees with an exact meeting spot along the Thames closer to the time, but you can join and leave the walk anywhere that suits you best - or you can join Li An and Maarten as they set off from Laleham at 9am if that's better for you. If you won't be joining at our meeting spot, drop us an email and we'll try to give you a rough timing of when we'll be at a particular spot. You'll need to be a bit flexible on the day as we will be waiting for the Drinkable Rivers team to arrive in Weybridge after they set off from Laleham, so please don't expect exact timings. See you there!