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Thames valley


The Thames Valley region is a loose term for the English counties or parts of those counties roughly following the course of the River Thames as it flows from Oxfordshire in the west to London in the east. It is generally taken to include parts of Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Berkshire, Surrey and sometimes two boroughs of southwest London. It rarely includes either the source of the Thames at Thames Head in Gloucestershire, or any part of Wiltshire, and does not include the informal entities Central London or the Thames Gateway which surrounds the Thames Estuary.

The Thames Valley region can be compared with the longer and narrower M4 corridor, i.e. the area within a few miles of the M4 motorway, which runs East–West extending from Hammersmith, London through Berkshire (interrupted by two small salients of Buckinghamshire) and then Wiltshire, South Gloucestershire and over the River Severn via the Second Severn Crossing, a Toll Bridge to South Wales.

The Thames Valley is one of the wealthiest parts of the European Union, aided by a skilled workforce and its accessibility to London. Historic trades have been replaced by wealth-generating knowledge-based industries: in particular, information and communications technology and life sciences.


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