Thames Cruises Beyond London: Windsor, Henley, Richmond and Oxford (2026)

Twelve miles upstream of Westminster the river stops going backwards. Teddington Lock is where the tide ends, and above it the Thames becomes a completely different waterway: level, slow, worked by lock keepers rather than by the moon, and lined with towns that have been putting boats on the water for two hundred years and more. Salters has been at Folly Bridge in Oxford since the 1850s. Turks at Kingston traces its family line back three centuries.

None of that shows up in most London cruise planning, because the two rivers barely talk to each other. The central sailings run daily, all year, on a fixed timetable. The upper river runs on seasons, some of them only six months long, several of them only on certain weekdays, and one that comes out on ten dated Saturdays a year because the boat burns coal.

I went through every published 2026 timetable and fare page for the operators still running scheduled passenger services above the tideway, then checked what the Environment Agency currently has flagged on the navigation. This guide is what came out: who sails where, on what dates, at what price, and how to fit an upriver day around a London one.

What Thames cruises run outside London?

Five scheduled operations in 2026. French Brothers at Windsor, Maidenhead and Runnymede. Hobbs of Henley on the Regatta reach. Salters Steamers from Oxford, with Abingdon and Marlow trips. Turks Launches between Kingston and Hampton Court. And Thames River Boats, the only through service from central London, running Westminster to Hampton Court from May to October.

The list is short because passenger boating on the upper Thames is a family business rather than an industry. Each of these operators owns its own fleet, publishes its own timetable and takes its own bookings, and none of them appears among the sailings listed on this site. The cruises sold here are the London ones. That is worth saying plainly once: if you want a Windsor or a Henley trip, you book it with the operator directly, and this guide exists to tell you what you are looking for when you do.

A sixth name belongs in the picture at Oxford. Oxford River Cruises runs small-group 45-minute sailings from Folly Bridge on electric Edwardian-style launches, capped at around twelve passengers, covering the university regatta course past Christ Church Meadow and the college boathouses. Adult fares sit at roughly £21 to £25, with afternoon tea and picnic versions running longer and considerably dearer. If you build an Oxford day around a sailing, the colleges themselves are best covered on foot; check dates for the alumni-guided walking tour here, a separate booking from any boat.

Every figure in that table is a published from-price for 2026 and every one of them moves: with the date, with the ticket type, and with whether you buy online or at the kiosk. The pattern is consistent across all of them, and buying ahead is cheaper everywhere it is offered.

How is the upper Thames different from the tidal river?

No tide, for a start. The tidal river ends at Teddington, and everything above it is a managed navigation with locks, weirs and a controlled level. That changes the timetable, the boats, the seasons and even the water quality, and it is why the upper river shuts down for winter while London does not.

The single most practical difference is predictability. A tidal river moves your sailing time: at least one operator on the Westminster to Hampton Court run states outright that its departures vary from day to day with the tides. Above Teddington the level is held by lock gates, so an upriver timetable can say 13:30 and mean it for five months.

The second difference is scale. Below Teddington the Thames is a commercial navigation running out to the sea, overseen by a harbour authority whose remit covers 95 miles from Teddington to the North Sea and which carries genuine cargo traffic on its eastern reaches. Above it the river is narrow enough that a boat carrying more than a couple of hundred people would struggle to turn, which is why the upriver fleets are small launches rather than the three-deck vessels you see at Westminster Pier.

The third is seasonality, and it is the one that catches visitors out. The London river runs every day of the year apart from Christmas Day. The upper river runs when the weather and the traffic justify it: Hobbs from April to September for public trips, Salters from April to September, Turks from March to October, Thames River Boats from May to October. Only French Brothers stretches meaningfully into the winter, and even that thins to weekends after 1 November.

There is a fourth difference nobody advertises: what the river is used for. The upper Thames is a leisure navigation full of privately owned boats, and the passenger launches share every lock with them. That is why an upriver trip feels unhurried in a way a London sailing never does, and also why a two-hour round trip covers a distance a central sightseeing boat would do in twenty minutes.

What does a river cruise at Windsor cost?

The 40-minute round trip is the cheapest regular sailing on the upper river: £11.90 booked online or £13.50 on the day, with a child aged 3 to 13 at £7.90 online and infants under three free. It runs daily from 14 February to 1 November 2026, at least every half hour between 10:00 and 17:00, and the ticket is open for any sailing that day.

That open-ticket detail is the reason Windsor works better than anywhere else upstream for an unplanned afternoon. You buy, you walk down to the water, and you take whichever boat is next. Nothing else on the non-tidal Thames offers that frequency, and the winter tail is unusual too: weekends only from 2 November to 20 December, hourly between 10:00 and 15:00. If Windsor becomes an overnight, the Sir Christopher Wren sits right at the boarding promenade by Windsor Bridge.

Sir Christopher Wren Hotel, Windsor Check rates ›

The two-hour round trips are the better sail if the afternoon is free. The upstream version leaves daily at 13:30 from 2 May to 27 September, then weekends only through to 1 November. The downstream version, a newer option running through Romney Lock and out past Datchet, leaves daily at 14:00 from 23 May to 27 September. Both are £19.40 online against £22 on the day, and a cream tea can be added for £10 a head.

Then there are the steamboats, which have no equivalent anywhere else on the river. French Brothers keeps genuine Victorian coal-fired vessels in a fleet of sixteen craft, and brings them out for one-hour cruises on ten dated 2026 sailings: 6, 13 and 20 June, 12, 19 and 26 July, and 1, 8, 15 and 22 August, at 11:30, 13:00, 14:30 and 16:00. An adult is £19 and a child £12.75.

Family and concession fares are published across the upriver fleet and they vary more than the adult prices do, which matters if you are booking for four. The bands below are the 2026 figures from each operator's own pages.

Can you cruise from London to Hampton Court?

Yes, from May to October, on the one through service that crosses the tidal boundary. Thames River Boats runs Westminster to Kew, Richmond and Hampton Court at £27 single or £36 return, with a licensed bar and toilets aboard. Sailing times shift day to day with the tide, so the timetable has to be checked for your date.

This is the trip that connects the two halves of the river, and it is a full day rather than an excursion. The boat leaves the tideway at Teddington Lock, which is the moment the whole character of the journey changes, then works up through Kingston to the palace reach. Doing it one way and returning overland is the version most people prefer, because six hours of round trip is a lot of sitting.

The shorter version of the same idea starts further upstream. Turks Launches runs Kingston to Hampton Court on a seasonal March-to-October timetable with multiple daily sailings, at £10 single and £13 return, and no advance booking needed for standard trips. If the palace is the destination and the boat is the pleasant way to arrive, that is the cheaper and simpler route.

Below Teddington the same water is the prettiest stretch inside London, which is a separate argument made properly in the piece on the prettiest town on the Thames. Richmond and Kew are the reason: wooded tidal bends, a botanic garden frontage and a hill above the towpath, all of it looking far more like the upper river than like the capital.

For a central London sailing at the other end of the same river, the hour-long downstream run is the direct counterpart: one way, an hour, ending somewhere worth walking around. The route is mapped pier by pier in the Westminster to Greenwich guide, and you can check the live departures for your date before deciding which day gets the river and which gets the palace.

What sails at Henley, Marlow and Oxford?

Hobbs of Henley runs one-hour sightseeing along the Regatta reach from 1 April to 30 September 2026 at £12 an adult, with roughly three afternoon departures. Salters runs hourly short trips from Folly Bridge in Oxford, April to September, at £16. Marlow gets occasional 40-minute summer trips, subject to availability.

The Henley boat works between Marsh Lock at the town end and Hambleden Lock downstream, which is the exact water the regatta course occupies, with pre-recorded commentary rather than a live guide. Departures cluster around 12:30, 14:30 and 15:45. The fleet includes vessels named Hibernia and Waterman alongside Edwardian launches, and the larger New Orleans comes out for the themed sailings.

Those themed dates are the strongest reason to look at Henley in particular. Vintage afternoon tea sailings run on selected Sundays including 30 August and 13 September. Jazz cruises land on 27 August and on 6 and 20 September, with the Henley Jazz Festival taking the weekend of 26 and 27 September. There is a 2.5-hour sightseeing sailing on 26 August, a murder mystery evening on 31 October, and Christmas and Santa cruises through December. Group and private charters run year round with catering. An evening sailing at Henley usually means staying: the Relais sits at the bridge a minute from the boats, and the Hotel du Vin is the boutique fallback a short walk into town.

The Relais Henley Check rates ›

Hotel du Vin Henley-on-Thames Check rates ›

Oxford is a different proposition again, because the river there belongs to the university rather than to the town. The Salters run from Folly Bridge to Iffley Lock passes Christ Church Meadow and the college boathouses, hourly from about 11:00 to 17:00, at £16 for an adult and £11 for a child with under-threes free. The Oxford to Abingdon one-way sailings run Mondays to Thursdays between 20 July and 27 August, roughly two hours through Iffley and Sandford locks, at about £23 single.

Self-hire is the Oxford speciality and it is genuinely the best thing on the upper river. Salters hires punts, rowing boats and diesel day boats from Easter through October, weather permitting, with punts at roughly £25 to £30 an hour depending on the day of the week. It is slow, awkward and the closest anyone gets to having a stretch of the Thames to themselves. The London equivalent of that privacy costs a good deal more and moves a lot faster, which is covered in the private boat hire guide. The Head of the River, the pub-hotel directly on Folly Bridge beside the Salters pier, is the obvious Oxford base for a river day.

The Head of the River, Oxford Check rates ›

When in 2026 can you actually do this?

Between late March and late October for almost everything, with a February to December tail at Windsor only. April to September is the window where every operator on the list is sailing at once. Outside it, the upper river empties and the London boats carry the whole thing on their own.

The calendar matters more upriver than it does in London because the gaps are real closures rather than reduced timetables. A February trip to Henley finds no public boat at all. A November trip to Oxford finds the self-hire fleet laid up. The one exception is Windsor, where the 40-minute round trip carries on daily until 1 November and then weekends until Christmas week.

The other seasonal factor is the state of the water itself. Environment Agency notices for 2026 have flagged dry conditions and low water affecting locks from Sunbury through Molesey to Teddington from around 24 August, with earlier restrictions on the St John's to Osney, Goring to Culham and Penton Hook to Shepperton stretches, plus a temporary bridge at Caversham in August and September. None of that closes a cruise route, but the current restrictions and closures list is the thing to check the week before an upriver day.

For anyone whose interest in the upper river is more about the landscape than the boats, the Thames Path national trail runs 185.2 miles from a Cotswolds field near Kemble to the Woolwich Foot Tunnel, joining the England Coast Path there to make a continuous source-to-sea route of about 232 miles. Roughly a fortnight at a moderate pace covers the lot, and it reaches every town in this guide.

Should you do an upriver day or a London day?

Do both, and give each its own day. The upper river is a seasonal, timetabled, weather-dependent excursion that needs the afternoon built around it. The London river runs every day of the year with departures roughly every half hour in summer, which makes it the half of the trip you can move.

The sequencing that works is upriver first. A Windsor or Henley afternoon has a handful of departures and no fallback if the weather turns, so it wants to sit early in a trip where it can be shifted. The central sailings never fall through: four piers, a published timetable, and boats running from mid-morning to early evening.

The London ticket that behaves most like an upriver excursion is the day pass, because it turns the boat into transport rather than an event. It covers Westminster, London Eye, Tower and Greenwich piers, sails between 10:00 and 18:00, and beats two single sightseeing tickets on price. What it does not do is evenings, so a late arrival gets far less out of it. The pier-by-pier breakdown sits in the hop-on hop-off guide, and it is worth a look at what the pass costs on your date against the singles.

Whole-boat hire is where the two rivers converge. Every upriver operator runs group and private charters outside the public timetable, usually with catering, usually year round, and always booked directly. In London the equivalent is a fast boat taken out whole rather than by the seat: the 70-minute private run down to the Thames Barrier carries up to twelve and is priced per boat rather than per head, which changes the arithmetic completely for a group. Terms on that one differ from the standard sailings, so read the conditions on the listing before booking rather than assuming the usual cancellation window applies.

For the London half specifically, the ranked comparison of every central sailing is in the best cruise guide, the ticket-by-ticket arithmetic is in the price breakdown, and where each route actually begins and ends is set out in the start and end points piece. The whole central fleet, compared side by side, is what Thames River Cruises is for. Fix the upriver day first, then slot the city river in around it: that half never runs out of departures.

Common questions

The upper Thames rewards planning in a way the London river does not demand. Fix the upriver day around its timetable, keep the city day loose, and the two halves of the same river make a far better trip together than either does alone.