The South Bank is engineered for shaded walking by accident — Victorian engineers built the railway viaducts wide and high, and the post-war planners put the Royal Festival Hall and the National Theatre under enormous concrete overhangs facing the river. The combined eaves run almost a kilometer continuous from Waterloo to Tower Bridge.
These picks stay in that eave zone. We avoid the Queen’s Walk pavement itself between 11 AM and 4 PM in July — exposed, packed, hot. The cooler walks are 30 meters back, under the brutalism.