Running tour · London

The Final Miles: London Marathon

4.8 mi run

Open in Stride Stories

The stories on this route

1. Tower Bridge

   Look down at the road as you cross Tower Bridge. See the joint at mid-span? That's where the two bascules meet. They're the leaves of the central span, and they lift to let river traffic through. The bridge was designed by Horace Jones and engineered by John Wolfe Barry, and it opened in 1894.

2. The Tower of London

   Look up at the White Tower, rising above the walls. William the Conqueror built it from 1078, and at first it was resented as a symbol of oppression. Since then the Tower has been an armoury, a treasury, the Royal Mint and the home of the Crown Jewels. It was also a menagerie.

3. London Bridge, the reason London exists

   Look across the river at St Magnus-the-Martyr. There's been a bridge near here since the Romans. The founders of Londinium built the first one around AD 50. The one to picture, though, is the medieval stone bridge, finished in the early 1200s. It was lined with houses, most of them four or five storeys high.

4. Tate Modern, the Millennium Bridge and Shakespeare's Globe

   Look at the white, thatched Globe. It's a reconstruction, opened in 1997, and the story of the first one starts with a row over a lease. The Burbages' playhouse, the Theatre, stood in Shoreditch. When the lease ran out, their landlord, Giles Allen, claimed the building was his.

5. Oxo Tower and Blackfriars

   Look up at the top of the Oxo Tower. Three windows on each face, stacked: a circle, a cross, a circle.

6. Waterloo Bridge, the frost fairs and the Great Stink

   Watch the tide line on the river walls. This stretch rises and falls about seven metres. Hard to picture it frozen solid, but it was. In the winter of 1683 to 84, John Evelyn wrote of a great street of shops built on the ice, from the Temple to Southwark. An ox was roasted whole opposite Whitehall.

7. Cleopatra's Needle

   Look at the obelisk between the two bronze sphinxes. The pharaoh Thutmose III had it raised at Heliopolis around 1450 BC, in red granite from Aswan. It has nothing to do with Cleopatra. The name came from later Western tradition.

8. Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament

   Look at Westminster Hall, beside the rest of the palace. The story of the rest starts with the burning of old tally sticks. The Exchequer had kept its accounts on small wooden tally sticks until 1826. In October 1834, the Clerk of Works, Richard Weobley, was told to clear them while Parliament was adjourned.

9. Birdcage Walk and the fight for power

   Look over the rooftops to Elizabeth Tower. Now think about Parliament. For eleven years, it didn't sit at all. From 1629, Charles I ruled without it, claiming the divine right of kings. It's known as the Eleven Years' Tyranny. Then he needed money for a war with Scotland, and had to call Parliament back. It went badly.

10. Buckingham Palace

    Look at the flag on the roof. When the Royal Standard flies, the monarch is here. Or at least, in the building. This began as a townhouse. Buckingham House was built in 1703 for the Duke of Buckingham and Normanby. In the 1760s George III bought it for £21,000, as a private home for Queen Charlotte.

11. The London Marathon finish

    Look along the red road of The Mall, between Buckingham Palace and Admiralty Arch. This is where the London Marathon ends.

Stories researched October 2026 · every fact checked against a source