Brentford, Thames Lock Thursday 25 August

Last night was much quieter than when we moored outside Tesco’s. during the evening we had a small thunder storm and rain so we had to close some of the doors which wasn’t to good.

This morning we set off at quarter to ten all alone passing a few interesting boat, but as we approached Norwood Lock we could see a boat in there waiting for us. There were 2 Volockies and another volunteer checking boat numbers, he looked at our boat and then asked me the number, I pointed it out to him on the cabin side between us, he went away repeating the number to himself, so I hope he got it right when he got to the office. We only met one boat on our way to Brentford Basin and nothing else arrived before we left at 3 pm. so they didn’t have much to do. One of them did cycle down and opened the gates on the first 4 Hanwell locks, that is where we met the one coming up.

I didn’t find a sand bar where the River Brent comes in that I thought would be there.What I did see was a lot of Floating Pennywort all along the canal. we saw it further up the GU as well as the Lee and Stort.  Since we were last this way there are now mooring rings before you reach Brentford Basin so that frees up a lot of mooring in the area.
On the off side one of the units has some, I suppose you would call them sculptures of knotted ropes.

Also last time we were hear these warehouses had roofs on them and not fancy cladding on the ends, I think it was all corrugated.

Our first job was to go down to the water point on the way we passed a good sized gap and a short on, the boat we were travelling with sensibly took the short one. After filling with water we backed up to the larger one and fitted with a foot to spare. As we were backing up a group of kids arrived to go paddle boarding, looking down at the water where my prop had stirred it up it was jet black, smelly and bubbling. I wonder how often and under what circumstances they check the water quality, when its been undisturbed for 12 hours or just after a boat has turned round?

Settling in and watching the kids swimming in the foul water a CRT chap came by, he looked the sort that knew about boats and water so I asked his advice, should we stay put or drop through the gauging locks and moor above Thames lock? His suggestion was to drop down and he rang his mate at the lock to see if there were spaces, unfortunately he couldn’t get him so we had to walk down. What a job that is, they are resurfacing the bridge over the canal and Ham road that carries Augustus Close. The two direct routs to Thames lock is along the Ham and under the bridge or up Augustus Close and over the bridge. Both were closed off so it was wander round back streets to find our way through. When we did get there there were only 2 boats on all the 24 hr. moorings, so we looked for a way back, we should have retraced our steps.
Diana stopped at the Gauging lock to set it and I picked up Harnser. By now they were collecting duckweed in the basin.

We dropped through the Gauging Lock and as it was low tide on the Thames we had stacks of headroom under Brentford Road Bridge. The river is semi tidal here rising with the tide and dropping to weir level at low tide, about 4ft. By now the river below Thames Lock, I think its known as Brentford Creek was almost dry.  Below the weir there are several boat yards with boats sitting high and dry at low water but floating when the tide makes.

  We moored to the bank with a bit of slack in our ropes but the river only had half an inch to fall to be at weir level and the roof of the boat was level with the bank. When we came back after having an Indian meal the deck was level with the bank.

Today’s Journey   5¾ miles,  11 locks  in 3¾ hours

It is now 10 Oclock the Jazz band is playing atthe pub opposite and we have dropped back down to roof level with the bank.