Duck Tours Are Returning To London

Why the hell do people go on Duck Tours?

That was the question we were asking back in 2016, when we took one of the amphibious tourist rides ourselves, to work out if the bus/river tour mash-up was nothing but a load of quack.

A year later, people WEREN’T going on Duck Tours; when construction of the Thames Tideway super-sewer cut off the launch ramp located down the side of Vauxhall’s MI6 building, Duck Tours became a lame duck, taking their place on the list of Lost London Experiences.

Now though, the experience is set to re-emerge as Big Duck Tours. A press release from 7 November (which was, as far as we can see, first spotted by IanVisits), announces that London Amphibious Tours Limited has been granted a 15-year lease to operate an exclusive amphibious tour in London. This’ll be done with all-new, fully electric amphibious passenger vehicles (APV), manufactured by its sister company Seahorse Amphibious Vehicles, and operated by Big Bus Tours. (Perhaps Big Bus Tours’ Executive Chairman, Pat Waterman, felt that given his name, this riverine partnership was in the stars.)

Says Graham Lumley, Executive Chairman at London Amphibious Tours and Seahorse Amphibious Vehicles: “We are immensely proud to have secured a long-term lease at this prestigious site for which we thank the Duchy of Cornwall.”

No official launch date for Big Duck Tours has been given, but surely there’ll be no dearth of tourists eager to clamber aboard one of London’s clunkiest-looking vehicles (Duck Tours ran for a healthy 17 years before being forced to retire) — especially given it’ll no longer be belching out diesel fumes.

And, as we discovered nearly a decade ago, these trips can be a surprising amount of fun — full of eyebrow-raising London trivia, deadpan delivery and that show-stopping moment where you realise you’re in a vehicle that’s accelerating into the Thames…