WWT London Wetlands Centre visitor attraction

3 Dec

London ‘Wild Walk’ visitor attraction

A ‘commercial’ project within the London Wetlands Centre at Queen Elizabeth Walk, Barnes, London for the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust.

Approached to design a Rope Bridge that had the challenge of running seamlessly from a boardwalk over the water at 450mm height above water level, across a lake to a woodland copse. Structured and load tested to enable open access to the public as a feature of the London Wetlands Centre ‘Wild Walk’ with zero-impact within a conservation location and requiring planning permission. Our solution was our ‘floating Rope Bridge’ system.

We developed a two-tier structural cable system across the water anchored by 8 zero-impact ground buried anchor system, each seamlessly set 3m deep into the ground and each load tested to a minimum of 5 tonnes with contingency to 50T. All that could be seen is a stainless steel cable emerging from the ground, with no ground disturbance and no concrete - WWT were very impressed!

With a span of 25m and just 450mm of height available to water level from the existing board-walk we achieved success of the walkway span remaining just above the water surface - when fully loaded with adventurous visitors enjoying the ‘Wild Walk’ the deck-board walkway remains just skimming the water surface within a deep and safe hand-weaved rope balustrade Rope Bridge.

Completed on-time before the opening of the ‘Wild Walk’ in October 2018, to a fixed budget and full consultation throughout.