Laleham River Thames Friday 26 August 2016

There was no chance of being up late this morning as the planes coming in to land were following Brentford Creek and going virtually overhead.

7-30 am. and we had untied when a boat came from Brentford Basin, the Thames Lock gates were opening so I told him to go ahead and we slid in beside him. The Lock Keeper said the tide wasn’t up enough yet, so not enough water below the lock, it would be just a few more minutes so the boat next to me tied off his stern line after taking a turn round the bollard. He then proceeded to delve into his weed hatch. The lock gates closed behind us, so I called to him the gates are closed we are now going down. He continued pulling polly off his prop. I shouted even louder the paddles are going up, you are still tied off. He sort of looked so with more urgency, we are going down, you are tied up. with that he got up and tried to undo the rope which was jammed hard. At that point I blasted my horn and the lock keeper dropped the paddles and came out from his control cabin to see what was wrong, the back wash was sufficient to loosen the rope and he could undo it. We carried on locking and dropped about 4 foot so what would have happened if he had been alone I don’t know.

We left the lock and made our way to the Thames, it was a lovely sunny still morning and we soon  turned onto the Thames. The entrance to Bretford is easier to find now from the river as they have erected this sculpture since we were last this way.  We turned sharp right up the Thames and immediately our speed picked up by over 1½ miles an hour, however it didn’t last long before dropping back down, as we approached the Richmond Barrier which was still dripping the speed picked up again and stayed like it all the way to Teddington Lock. On our way we passed a family of Cormorants enjoying the morning sun. We didn’t meet another boat until we were approaching Teddington Lock where the first batch of cruisers had just left the lock and we had to wait for the second batch, by now we had a third Narrowboat following us. All three of us required Visitor Licences and the lock keeper said to moor above the blue bridge and walk back when we were ready. When we left the lock there was a long queue of cruisers coming down to lock out, so once out of the lock I gave two blasts on the horn to cut through the queue. The boats were heading down to both of Teddington Locks for a good half an hour and yesterday 100 locked down. There is an event at West India Dock this weekend. I walked back to get the licence and the EA chap asked if I would mind coming when they had all gone. Following all the cruisers there was the Yarmouth Belle going down, I think its wonderful that a 6” wide paddle hardly touching the water can propel such a large craft and the boiler burns so clean as well. Once I had parted with £61 for a weeks licence we were on our way.
Things are so much bigger on the Thames, the size of the waterway and the size of the groups of young canoeists.

I had heard the lock keeper at Teddington on the phone about a swimmer on the river, we met one by these canoes well to the other side of the river swimming between a Stand Up Paddle Board and a small support boat, later we would meet another one by himself just towing an orange buoy.

Something you don’t often see is a concrete Narrowboat, I don’t know how many still exist but this one has seen better days.  Mike on Victoria loading with coal on one of the hottest days of the year and its all manual work.

We passed some skiffs, a couple were stopped picking Blackberries on the river bank but the other kept pace with us at 4 mph over the ground against the flow for quite a while. 

As we approached Molesey  lock there was bit of a race for the lock, this cruiser overtaking me in the bridge with a trip boat coming down stream. We still got in the lock with them and the hire boat who went past us all and just shot straight into the lock second. Once in they didn’t have a clue what to do, gave the lock keeper the fenders to hold when he asked for ropes, at the next lock which we didn’t get to with them they weren’t doing much better.

Just above Sunbury Lock we saw an old friend with a new boat. Sue on No Problem XL unfortunately we only have a week to get to Oxford so stopping so early in the day was out of the question.

Some of the land owners take keeping boats from mooring on their land very seriously this one has even taken to employing a warrior to keep people away.

The Environment Agency or Thames Water have quite a large construction project going upgrading the water intake at what was once the Metropolitan Water Board inlet near the end of Desborough Channel, at the other end this lad was showing off the the girls by jumping in from the road bridge.

 

 

We had our eye on a 24 hour mooring at Laleham, most of the short term moorings we have passed have been empty. When we arrived there was a wide beam at the far end, an old Humber Keel called Daybreak, one of the few still capable of sailing and a cruiser in the middle of a gap. I was going to draw back to the end and just tag on with a bow and centre line, but the cruiser owner shot out and offered to move back which gave us loads of room to moor under a large willow tree that is providing lots of shade.

Today’s Journey 

19½ miles and  6 locks in  6¼hours

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.

Bulls Bridge Wednesday 24 August 2016

Last night we had planned to eat at the canal side pub, The Union Tavern, I had read mixed reports and when we got there the place was heaving, the garden looked full and the sound level from the music inside suited someone nearer 21 than 68 so we gave it a miss. Eating establishments in this part of town were a bit scarce so we ended up in what I thought was a rather expensive French restaurant, we were the only customers and the owner was also the chef and waitress. She explained all dishes were cooked fresh and it was very true, I started with King Prawns and they were giants. The cheapest wine was £24 a bottle but as Diana wanted white and me red we had wine by the glass. When you consider the quality of the meal, freshly prepared and cooked just for us it wasn’t too bad. The place was called Les Douceure De La Tentation. She has excellent reviews on TripAdvisor. O the cost for 3 courses, two glasses of wine and a small bottle of water £73
When we returned to the boat we went to bed with the offside doors open as well as the rear slide as it was so hot overnight.

This morning we wandered back into town to visit Zagros food centre where you could buy any fruit you could think of and ingredients from around the world.

At 11-30 we pushed carefully off, the reason it was carefully was that I had noticed that our bows were between the towpath and a motorbike on the bed of the canal, so we slipped back and out.
Today was even hotter, these swans were sitting in the shade on a floating barrier across the end of an offline mooring, they looked quite hot even there. We came across another group of canoeists with an instructor, he shepherd them between 2 moored boats on our approach and held them there until we passed. Its good to see the kids on the water.

The day was so hot I had to get our sunshade out, I don’t think we used it at all last year. It makes a big difference when you are just standing in the sun for a few hours especially if there is no breeze.

At Bulls Bridge junction we turned left and stopped to fill with water at the Tesco Visitor moorings, we then moved down to the end before doing a bit of shopping that included 2 ice creams. We moored here overnight a couple of weeks ago and found it quite noisy as its a 24 hour Tesco so we decided to move along a bit. Just past Tesco’s there is the old BW Bulls Bridge Lay-by where all the boats use to wait when they didn’t have loads, today its residential moorings. I don’t know if the wet and dry docks date back to then but I would expect so.

One of the boats it looks like and old Springer has sunk which is always sad to see but a duck has made good use of its foredeck.   We continued down for a few hundred yards but were unable to get close enough to the bank to get off so we kept pulling back until I could get the back close enough to jump ashore and the bows stepable, I would be very surprised if any boats go passed before we set off tomorrow for Brentford basin.

Today’s Journey  12½ miles, 1 Junction in 4¾ hours.

Maida Hill Tuesday 23 August 2016

Its amazing how busy the towpath is, both at night and also early in the morning, you can hear people jogging along the towpath around 6AM and people heading home obviously a bit merry at midnight. There was no sign of the owner of the boat we were moored against although there was a light on all night, I think they visited this morning briefly as the curtains were arranged differently, or maybe they work nights.

We pushed of at quarter to ten as quietly as possible in case they were in bed and made our way up to the locks. CRT are replacing a lot of lock gates, they are working on Hampstead Road lock at the moment, I hope this one is on the list.

We passed a set of offside long term pontoon moorings with a novel mooring arrangement that I had not seen used on a large scale for Narrowboats, they are normally used on much lighter vessels.

We were soon passing the Gasometers again again, as we entered St Pancras lock an inflatable canoe asked to join us, I asked if he was sure and he said he was quite happy. I felt this was the safest way to protect them. 

There was a Volocky at Hawley Lock as well as a gentleman who I suspect was selling illegal substances. At Hampstead Road Locks there were another 2 volockies, the left hand lock going up is having new bottom gates fitted, at the moment they are making and fitting the stop planks to go in below the lock, these are meaningful bits of timber. At the moment there is just a dame across the mouth of the lock but this doesn’t give a safe place for the public and CRT are planning to opening the chamber to the public next weekend. That was the last of our locks for today.

At Cumberland Basin I met a trip boat coming the other way. I gave a good blast on the horn as I approached the bend and she responded. My horn is very similar sounding to their horns, not just a car hooter so people tend to take notice and she was well over her side as she approached the bend, as was I so it all went well. 
Lisson Grove Bridge obviously has some problems as the first section has had the roof lined with polythene. I see the towpath through it has been closed for some while by National Power?

We didn’t have to wait at ether of the tunnels today and there were far fewer boats about than at the weekend when we were going the other way.
We turned into Paddington Basin hoping to get a mooring but unless we doubled up again there was nothing, as we entered the basin a boater called out “I read your blog”  so I included this just for you.

At the entrance to the basin there is a row of bubbles, I am not sure if its to aerate the water or try to keep the duckweed out. We carried on along the Paddington Arm of the GU, I don’t imagine this boat goes very far only between bridges. We found a gap to moor in and then found why there was a gap, it was far to shallow so we carried on to just by the A40 where we found a 60 foot gap so the fenders didn’t quite touch the boat ahead and behind, but this was right by the bus workshop so Diana went for a walk and reported a space a little further along, no rings but no A40 and no Bus workshop. I would imagine they would work on buses through the night, so we moved on. It wasn’t far but we passed these gardens on the off side.

I am not sure if its the work of one mane or a collective of all the houses but the gateway leads to one persons garden. There are some very interesting inscriptions on some of the statues. We are now moored just ahead of this boat, its like a floating Charity Dock.

  

 

Today’s Journey      

9 Miles, 6 Locks,  1 basin, 2 canals in 4¼ hours