Local food worth trying
There is no Thames Valley dish a vegan should chase, and looking for one wastes a meal. What the river has instead is the riverside pub, which is the trail's actual food culture, so the useful knowledge is which pub dishes travel well: chips, a bean or vegetable chilli, a jacket potato, the curry of the day, a salad with the cheese left off. Tide Tables under Richmond Bridge is the clearest example of that idiom built for you rather than adapted to you, a fully vegetarian kitchen doing tarts, lasagne, jacket potatoes, pies and salads with vegan and gluten-free versions. In London the route walks through food from everywhere else, and Borough Market at Southwark is the one place on the whole path where the plant-based option is the headline rather than the footnote, with Mallow describing itself as a 100% plant-based restaurant in the middle of the market.
What to buy
Own-brand ranges are the cheap, clearly labelled answer here and labelling matters more on this trail than choice does, because you will often be buying at speed in a small store. Co-op GRO is the range you meet most in the upper river, since a Co-op is the kind of shop small Thames towns like Lechlade run to, and its mushroom and red pepper sausage rolls are the thing to look for in a chiller you are passing at lunchtime. Tesco Plant Chef is the largest of the ranges and most of it carries the Vegan Society sunflower trademark, which saves reading a back label in the rain. Sainsbury's Plant Pioneers is strong on chilled items that survive an afternoon in a rucksack, sausage rolls and No Chicken Goujons, and its oat cream is well rated. M&S Plant Kitchen is rated top of the ranges and Waitrose Plantlife sits beside it, both at premium prices. The sunflower trademark is the quickest reliability check across any of them.
Good places on the trail
confirmed, on the path just north of Oxford: The Perch, Binsey OX2 0NG, 01865 728891, a riverside pub whose own site carries a separate downloadable vegan menu, kitchen noon to 9pm daily. confirmed, on the path at Richmond: Tide Tables, 2 The Arches TW9 1TH, 020 8948 8285, a fully vegetarian cafe in an arch under Richmond Bridge with vegan and gluten-free dishes, open daylight hours, with a sister cafe, Hollyhock, up in Terrace Gardens. confirmed, beside the path at Southwark: Mallow in Borough Market, 8 Southwark Street SE1 1TL, described on its own site as 100% plant-based, with a plant-based afternoon tea Monday to Friday 2pm to 5pm and no step-free access. confirmed, one bridge off the path at Reading: Vegivores Natural Kitchen, 41 St Martin's Precinct, Caversham RG4 8BA, 0118 947 2181, 100% plant based and in its own words never deep fried. confirmed but not walkable from the towpath: Planted Plates at Signal Yard, Milton, Abingdon OX14 4RR, fully vegan and weekday daytime only, sitting in a business park south of the town, so it is something to reach from an Abingdon night stop rather than a lunch stop. limited, and worth knowing because it is the honest picture of the middle third: the only other dedicated veg kitchen found between Oxford and Windsor was Blue Sky Eco Cafe in Abingdon, which opens on the first Tuesday of the month for ninety minutes and closes for August and September. unknown, which covers most of the riverside pubs: The Trout at Tadpole Bridge on the upper river publishes its hours and its menu style but nothing about dietary options, and that silence is the norm up there rather than the exception, so ring ahead where a pub is the only kitchen for your evening. Kingston's long-running riverside vegetarian restaurant on the High Street is still listed in plenty of guides and is reported to have closed in late 2024, so check it before building an evening around it.
Trail treats
Mallow does a plant-based afternoon tea at Borough Market, Monday to Friday between 2pm and 5pm, which is a good use of an hour after Southwark if you are walking the tidal section in stages. Tide Tables does cakes alongside its vegetarian menu with vegan versions, and its position, an arch under Richmond Bridge with a garden of plane trees, makes it the pleasantest sit-down stop on the London approach. Beyond those two the treat research came up thin: vegan ice cream and bakery leads in Oxford, Henley and Greenwich could not be confirmed on an operator's own page, so treat them as worth a look in passing rather than worth a detour.
Where to restock
Cricklade and Lechlade are the stock-up points that matter, because the upper river is small villages and some have neither pub nor shop. Lechlade has a Co-op on Station Road, GL7 3ER, with a second general store opposite it, and that is the last proper shop before the quiet run down past Radcot and Newbridge towards Oxford. Oxford is the next place with real choice and is the obvious place to reset. After Oxford the constraint stops being supply and becomes price: the Thames Valley towns are well stocked and unremarkable to shop in, and from Kingston inwards the route is continuously urban, so from there on carry food for the day rather than for the trip. Because the path stays within reach of a station for most of its length, an upper-river day can also be started or finished in a town with a shop rather than in a village without one, which is the cheapest fix for the thin stretch above Oxford.
Things that may not be vegan
The trail's real trap is the pint rather than the plate. This is a pub walk and much of the beer on the hand pumps is cask, which in Britain is often fined with isinglass from fish swim bladders. Viva's guidance is blunt about it: "Avoid hand pump beers as these are cask and therefore often non-vegan. Opt for bottles, cans and kegs (metal taps) instead." Barnivore will settle a specific brewery if you want to look one up before you order. On the food side the ordinary British ones apply and are all worth asking about rather than assuming: pastry on a pie or a sausage roll is often made with butter or lard even when the filling is meat-free, a scone for a riverside cream tea is often egg-washed, and deep-fried items in a pub kitchen often share a fryer with the battered fish, so ask when you order if that matters to you.