Review: Visiting London’s Tower Bridge with kids

After being invited to visit the Tower Bridge Exhibition last week I was texting friends about my exciting adventure. It wasn’t my first time at the iconic bridge, but it was my first time going with a young family member and it had turned out to be an educational and interesting morning out for both.

We started our journey at the North West tower, where we took a lift up to the high-level walkway and watched a few minutes of video from the olden days. A friendly staff member was on hand to answer questions, and we were quick to grab him to learn some quick facts.

On the walkway, we read more about what he’d told us about the reasons for Tower Bridge to be built, and we talked about what it might have been like to live in London at that time. To bring this story to life, we bought our very first virtual reality headset (£5) on the walkway, and when using it with the Timelooper app, it felt like we were on the bridge when it was being built.

In addition to the Timelooper app–which I can’t wait to explore more as the children learn about different phases in history in school–we also downloaded the free Tower Bridge family app. On this app, we clicked off where we were and there were little games to play relating to the area of the Bridge we visited.

The highlight was a game where we could drag and drop buildings we spotted on the skyline and read an interesting fact about it when we placed it correctly. I think this app–coupled with the brilliant view from the walkway–made for a great way to teach children about London’s iconic buildings, such as the Shard, Gherkin and Armadillo.

While standing on the walkway we also took lots of pictures on the glass floor where visitors can watch boats roam past on the river, and we had a go at pressing our own penny after an extremely kind boy gave Big Girl the £1.01 she needed for a machine to make her an elongated penny as a souvenir from the day.

After finishing our tour upstairs we took the lift back down and did the two minute walk to the engine room on the south side of the river. There we could put on the Timelooper headset again to get an insight into what it had been like to work in the engine room, and there were several little relevant games for Big Girl to do on the family app.

Our short visit to this location ended in the gift shop, where we clearly had to buy a little memory from the day and came out with a key chain. I spotted The Ivy right outside and couldn’t help thinking it would have been nice to sit down for lunch there if we hadn’t needed to rush back home on the tube.

Tower Bridge will also run 50-minute yoga classes at 7.30am on the third Wednesday of every month on the high-level walkway from October to December, and Yoga in the Walkways tickets are available to book on Eventbrite for £25 per person.

Tags: Attractions, Landmarks, London, Review, Tower Bridge