London Marathon

Who said all transportation is closed down?

The runners have to get to London to participate. They will be using public transport.

The London Underground starts operating at 6am.

If you are staying at the Tower Doubletree you don’t need to use the Tower Hill station. Take 10-15 minute walk up to Aldgate station where all of you can board a District Line Underground train to South Kensington. The large and interesting V & A museum is right there. The V & A cafe is a lovely and lively spot for a meal. Can spend hours at the
V & A OR from South Kensington station stroll to Harrod’s to shop or explore the food hall.

There's plenty more to do nearby the V&A as well, but I'm posting a comment because I want to encourage people to take advantage of special events even when you don't have a dog in the race, so-to-speak.
The atmosphere/spirit around the finish line and recovery area of a marathon is truly inspiring.
I've been in Rome during their marathon and the minor inconvenience of some detours is more than made up for by the feeling of camaraderie and accomplishment steaming off of the participants!

Transport won't close down, but there will be road closures and diversions all along the route. The police and the city will be reopening roads as quickly as possible behind it as the marathon progresses. The tube and DLR will operate as normal, but it's always best to check for possible disruption from engineering works on your route before travelling on the tube on a Sunday.

Yeah, the runners have to get there and people go to the course to cheer them on. The theory that everything will be blocked off. We won’t be able to go anywhere is not realistic. I’ve seen it on a couple of places

but you will have problems. If you’re trying to cross a major road and you’ll discover they’ll be designated crossing areas and you may have to wait quite a while - the runners get the right of way

What Evan Evans is telling you is the roads are closed so they’re not going to drive their buses anywhere which makes perfect sense, but the tube will still be running

Tammy, what tour were you trying to get with Evan Evans?

Wherever you were wanting to go--say for example Canterbury and Dover--you could take a train very early in the morning, spend the day at these two places, and travel back to London in the evening after dinner, after the event is over.

I am taking for granted, when you mentioned an Evan Evans tour, that you had thought about leaving town to avoid the Marathon crowds.

I don't think you need to worry about being "stuck" with no where to go and no way to get there. You might even find that day to be somewhat special. One of my favorite memories of London was popping out of Paddington Station in 2011 to find London "shutdown" for the Tour of Britain, the U.K.'s biggest professional cycling race. We are cycling fans but had no idea that the London portion of the race was occurring that day. So we walked down the middle of the Mall from Buckingham Palace through Admiralty Arch and over to Westminster without cars or buses, just people strolling through the heart of London, and headed to the finish line as the cyclist came flying by as they made their circuit around London. We briefly saw some of our favorite cyclists, including Mark Cavendish, and decided to just wander around and enjoy a festive, pedestrian friendly London.

I asked Evan Evans for any tour available that day and they responded they will not be running tours that day, lots of road closures, happy to take us another day. Thank you for all your info. Appreciate it. I also agree about watching part of the race since we have never done so. Very true. Thank you again