Surrey – Narrowboat Firecrest

Riding the Tide, from Teddington to Brentford

We rose early as our Teddington Lock booking was for 7am.

Looking back to say goodbye to the Thames that we had spent 4 months enjoying

Eric had plugged in the VHS radio and erected the aerial, to comply with the Port of London Authority (PLA) bylaws

And off we set

We were sharing the lock with 2 other boats, also going to Brentford. And as they had both done the journey before, were happy to take the lead and keep us in view.

Teddington Lock is actually a triple lock system, the “great” lock or barge lock accommodates the largest boats such as the floating gin palaces, the launch lock for the little boats like Firecrest and the skiff lock, which is a tiny narrow affair for the rowers. Although there are lockies on duty 24/7, they hold back the majority of boats until the tide is high and turning so that we are carried with the down stream flow instead of fighting against it. Hence the need to book our passage. Because we were being given safety instructions, I forgot to take many photos, and because the tide was high, it was more like going through a 6 inch stop lock than the colossal deep trench that we had seen the evening before.

Soon we were on our way, unfortunately the weather was not obliging with the view, and we can only imagine what Ham house up on its hill ought to have looked like.

We soon approached Richmond Bridge

And then Richmond half tide lock. This is a barrage lock that manages tidal river levels, you can pass under the designated arch freely 2 hours either side of high tide, at other times, you have to pay a fee to use the manned lock.

We duly went under the arch and continued speeding downstream. The journey from Teddington to Brentford is about 5 miles, and it had taken us an hour. To put it in perspective, on the canals we travel at roughly 2.5miles per hour. The london skyline was now visible, but we also saw our lead boat turning left.

And the glint of the stainless steel sculpture known as Liquidity that was our marker point to guide us back onto the Grand Union Canal

Liquidity, where the Grand Union Canal joins the Thames

Its quite a tricky manouver to take a narrowboat across the river which has both a downstream and a tidal flow to compete against, but Eric put full throttle on and Firecrest behaved beautifully. We didnt overshoot or get swept downstream backwards. But oh what a difference, from a flowing river that was easily 100m wide, to a much narrower channel, which at this point is still tidal, and into Thames Lock 101. Thames lock also needs to be booked to accommodate the tide levels.

And then we were here, back onto the canal system, goodbye Enviroment agency, hello CRT, hello duckweed, hand cranked locks and urban jellyfish (aka plastic bags and other detritus)

Back on track

With the chores checked, and the chums chatted to, we were back on track travelling towards London. We had a very pleasant overnight stop at the 48 hour Shepperton VM. (Visitor mooring)

Sailed right past Hampton Court palace, (with a touch of envy at the boats moored there)

Through Kingston, where some modern architecture thought he was designing a cruise liner, its actually called the Admiralty building

And under Kingston Bridge. Eric had spent his teenage years around this area, so spent some time checking out his old cycle routes but found it so different from how he remembered it that it wasn’t fun.

And we moored up for the night at Teddington lock

Teddington locks mark the start (or end) of tidal reach for us. The locks are managed by the enviroment agency and transit needs to be booked and is timed to aid navigation go with the flow. We dutifully paid our mooring fee and set the alarms our passage for 7am the following morning.

It had been a long days cruise so we didn’t go far exploring, but I was quite excited to see a fully laden pear tree along the towpath, until I realised, it was also full of parakeets and all the pears had been “tested” we’ve been seeing and hearing these colourful pigeons since we reached Windsor, but I hadn’t been able to snap a photo of them until now because they fly so quickly and are so well camouflaged in the tree tops. Mind you we can certainly hear them. There have been parakeets living wild in the UK since victorian times but their numbers have increased drastically since the 1990s. In 2012 There were around 32000 in London, I suspect its a lot higher now, and it doesnt take a rocket scientist to wonder about the impact these birds will have on our native wildlife.

A slight detour, back to Windsor.

Having enjoyed several days at Hampton Court, we should have continued downstream towards London. But we’d made a few commitments to see people, including having found a dentist willing to see us as walk in customers for our long overdue check ups. Accessing routine health care as a continual cruiser is a continual frustration. We snatch what we can where we can and try to keep healthy, which probably means I shouldn’t take advantage of hedgerow foraging. But the fruit came from Hampton court so I couldn’t miss an opportunity to make Royal Jelly.

We turned the boat around, said goodbye to Hampton Court palace and began our cruise back to Windsor.

Thats a posh pad on the banks of the Thames

But Eric had warned me I might face execution, poaching from Henry VIII’s back yard, so we were a bit worried when we realised we were being chased down by the police.

Turns out it was the Met on the run, not us. They were escaping from their regular city patch to familiarise 2 new officers with the route to Windsor Castle. They occasionally provide royal river protection along that section of the Thames. But whilst they cracked on apace, we meandered more slowly, stopping at Staines, to see the London Stone.

In 1197, Richard I needed money to pay for his Crusades, so he sold the crown’s rights over the River Thames, from the estuary to Staines, to the Corporation of the City of London. The date, 1285 is engraved into this stone as the boundary marker of that new jurisdiction. The original stone is in a local museum but this replica is next to the river in the memorial park

We took advantage to restock the fridge in Staines and enjoy some nice moorings overnight

before heading back upstream, under the M25

Past the lovely mooring at Runnymede, although the NT had decided August would be a good time of year to relay the footpath so although we were able to moor, we were effectively caged in and unable to access the actual site.

When we got back to Windsor we checked onto the electric mooring point and had visits from some good friends

Hampton Court Palace

When your next door neighbour is Henry VIII’s pleasure palace, it would be wrong not to take advantage. We decided to treat ourselves to a years membership of the Historic Royal Palaces trust which allows unlimited visits to Hampton Court, plus 4 other royal abodes.

The Lord Chancellor, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey, (born in Ipswich, rose to prominence as a catholic priest serving Henry VIII, died of natural causes on his way to face charges of treason after the fiasco around the annulment of Henry’s first marriage to Catherine of Aragon.) Wolsey began the building up of Hampton Court for his own purposes in the early 1500’s but Henry took a liking to it and by 1530, it became one of his homes, showcasing his wealth and power.

Everything is on a grand scale

and my photography doesn’t do any justice to the inside of beautiful old buildings Hence me borrowing this photo of the Grand Hall and its 500 year old tapestries from the HRP trust web pages.

The Grand Hall (from HRP story of Hampton Court)

These priceless tapestries depict the story of Abraham as Henry tried to affiliate himself with good biblical teaching. They would have travelled with Henry as he moved his “court” to various other palaces around the country. But Henry did love the lavish lifestyle and this was where he chose to spend a lot of time, entertaining and showing off. The palace continued to be a royal residence long after Henry and his six wives had lived there.

And if you look over the fence, theres Firecrest.

Shakespeare performed many of his plays for Elizabeth I and James I in the 1600s. During the Georgian era in the 1700s Sir Christopher Wren was commissioned to revamp the palace and thankfully instead of tearing down the old Tudor buildings he added the little extention that we can see through the gates from our mooring.

No money was spared with the decor, and Hampton Court is likened to the palace of Versailles

But grand though the insides were, I do love wandering around the gardens

Hampton Court is famous for its maze, but we didn’t fancy competing with hordes of little kids getting lost. Instead we enjoyed searching for all the amazing characters made out of willow weaving that were lost amongst the flower beds

But thankfully the war of the Roses was done and dusted before Henry VIII came to the throne

Hampton court fell out of favour as a royal residence in the 18th C. Many of the rooms became Grace and Favour apartments for the aristocracy if they had fallen upon hard times and had served the monarchy well. This continued until the 1980s. It was Queen Victoria who first opened up the Court to the general public to stroll around.

Whilst I have barely scratched the surface of what we saw, having HRP trust membership definitely paid for itself as we both popped in and out several times to enjoy different aspects of the palace during our 5 day stay.

Standing on Hampton Court Bridge looking at Firecrest moored (on the right of the photo)

https://www.hrp.org.uk/hampton-court-palace/#gs.a0czva

On our way from the Wey

After three weeks on the Wey, it was time for us to push off from Thames Lock.

Farewell beautiful River Wey, We’re sure we will come back

And rejoin the big river Thames.

past some pretty impressive houseboats

And some …. well …. some in need of a bit of a declutter

And some that were for sale… if you have a spare £1.8 million. But it is Edwardian, has 5 bedrooms and has an extremely large plot, but not even the temptation of a large workshop could persuade Eric to buy it for me, as it is “… in need of restoration ”

So we sailed on, aiming for the Electric charging point at Molesey lock. We had followed the guidance and emailed 48 hours in advance to request a booked mooring, but hadn’t received a reply. So it didn’t come as much of a surprise when the lockie laughed and told us it was broken…. but we didn’t laugh back when he told us it had been broken for over two years. And to be quite honest we were hot, tired and low on power so pretty “cheesed“ off that, after 2 years, it was still listed on the website as available. Perhaps Molesey’s topiary was quite appropriate.

Reverting to plan B, we continued on under Hampton Court Bridge

Just one of the Hampton Court bridge arches

And 5 minutes later we moored up on the Hampton Court visitor moorings

The charging fee was a bit confusing, all boats have to register on arrival, but the first night is free, the second night is £16 for a 60’boat, or £8 for a shorter boat, then I got very confused and had to phone up. In the end we paid £32 for 5 nights, which we consider pretty good value considering, we were sitting outside Hampton Court Palace’s back gates. No electricy but plenty of sunshine

And as Eric spent his teenage years in this area, we had a lot of friends and more family to catch up with.

And to our amusement we received an email about our electric point booking request at Molesey lock.. no apology, just an “I understand the lock keeper has explained the situation” to which I responded by acknowledging that we understand things break down…. but if its been out of action for two years, WHY is it still listed as a facility, and please treat this as a complaint…. to which I am pleased to say, has been acted upon and after a few emails, the website has been updated.

Visited on the Wey at Wisley

There have been so many highlights during this years cruising, its been hard to keep up with our adventures. Many years ago, we lived in Surrey and had membership to the Royal Horticultural Society, Wisley. So when we realised we could moor only 30 minutes walk away, we leapt at the chance to visit. And also to meet up with our family to relive some of the happy memories of mum and dad who used to come here most weekends. Wisley is full of iconic vistas which will be very familiar to people who visit often.

But its not a garden that stands still in time. So much had changed since our last visit. They are currently digging a huge new reservoir which will be disguised as a “lake” to help them manage that most precious of resources. And as Eric is from a family of engineers , this was worth a close inspection.

It just looks like a giant sand pit to me

And despite the general current shortage of rain, the gardens have been maintained and the borders are spectacular.

And much to my amazement, the big glass house was pleasantly cool to walk around even though it looked like a dessert

and we spent some time chatting in there, and wondering what they had done with the old orchid house that we all remembered

Its not really orchid season, but still some in flower in their new tropical home

And it wasn’t all cactus

Once we left the glass houses we were treated to a walk through the South African velt

The Heather garden had only just been planted 30 years ago and at the time it looked, quite frankly, boring, but not any more, although there’s not too many family gardens that are big enough to copy this in its entirety.

One of the places Mum and Dad used to love spending time (besides the cafe) was the rockery

Which again is on such a scale that you couldn’t transplant it all into the average garden, but when Eric and I moved to Suffolk, and attempted a bit of landscaping in our new garden, we took a lot of inspiration from the Wisley rockery.

One of the things I miss in our boat home is not having a garden to grow vegetables so we were fascinated by the concepts being researched at Wisley in their “veg plot”. They are currently trialling a “no dig” policy for their veg, and these two comparison plots showed just how beneficial it can be to avoid digging. Mind you I think the benefit is enhanced by the amount of good quality mulch applied each year.

Identical planting, but the top bed has been dug and the lower one has been mulched

But as all the gardeners world presenters remind us gardens aren’t just for working in, relaxing with friends is just as important. Not only did we enjoy a day on our own, and a day with family. We were also treated to a surprise visit from our good friends from Suffolk

And a day with one of Eric’s work colleagues and his family

Wisley isnt the cheapest garden to visit as a one off, but it offers exceptionally good value membership deals, which give access to several other RHS gardens and partner gardens. And as Wisley covers such a huge site, its definitely worth breaking a visit into 2 or more days to be able to appreciate it all.

But as I frequently remind Eric, you can never see too many roses.

And what’s more the mooring is next to the Anchor pub who did very good wood fired pizza.

We werent the only ones who enjoyed visiting Wisley our friends and family did too, and we even got the youngsters to help out with the locks when we took them for a mini cruise

I think thats next years holiday idea sorted

apologies for the number of photos today, this is only a fraction of what we took.

Visiting the River Wey

The River Wey Navigation is a magical part of Surrey. As a visitor, you leave the wide and busy River Thames at Shepperton and enter a cool quiet haven of peace and tranquillity.

But nearly 400 years ago, it was quite a different matter. Sir Richard Weston realised that the meandering backwater could be made navigable (and profitable) by adding canal sections to straighten it out a bit. The River Wey became a “navigation” in 1653. It was a mini motorway in its own right, over a 100 years before the Canal Mania swept through the country. Entrepreneurs took advantage of being able to transport their goods more quickly and reliably by barge. Flour, corn, wood and gunpowder went to London and on the return, coal was sent for use in making the gunpowder. In the late 17th century 4000 trips were made carrying timber to help rebuild London after the Great Fire of 1666. The River Wey is now managed by the National Trust and there are some interesting wiki pages that talk about its history. A lot of the old mill buildings are still standing, although mostly converted into rather nice homes.

We joined the Wey at Thames Lock, where we paid our 3 week fee of £105.30 (with discount for being NT members) and were lent a specific sized windlass to work the 17 locks, on the 20 navigable miles up to Godalming.

Most but not all of the locks were in excellent condition,

We also came across a very rare turf sided lock, (as opposed to the usually seen stone built locks) the Walsham Gates are now a flood lock so are generally left open.

One of the nice things about the Wey is that you always leave the gates open as the boat exits a lock. Which makes double locks a lot easier.

Although at Millmead lock in Guildford, there’s no shortage of willing helpers. We managed to arrive in Guildford just as the temperatures were threatening to top 40° so although we had a brief trip up the beautiful High Street, we didnt linger.

As the temperatures soared, by far the best place to be was on the water.

One of our favourite mooring spots was on the meadow near Newark Lock and Ripley. We were kept entertained by the youngsters paddle boarding, and it didn’t take me long to pluck up the courage to ask to borrow one for a go. If we cruised here regularly, I would definitely be hankering after my own board. Its good fun. There was lots of entertainment to be enjoyed on the Wey, we were never short of people to watch, and more than once we were the ones being watched

In our opinion we were enjoying a perfect holiday existance, warm and relaxed, so I got to spend a lot of time sitting ourside spinning, and chatting to the many people who stopped to enquire what I was doing.

This is my idea of a real treat, being able to sit outside and spin

the evenings were balmy, with some beautiful sunsets

And the mornings equally etherial

Not all of it entirely peaceful as the M25 follows the route for a mile around Byfleet.

but most of the time we felt as if we had been supplanted into a Constable painting

From Windsor to Wey via America

We spent our final night in Windsor on the Baths Island electric charging point, which is exceptionally good value, £10 to moor plus £5 for the electric.

And I make no apology for sharing more photos of the amazing views of Windsor castle when we set off. After Romney Lock the river skirts the royal estate with strict warnings not to even think about stepping foot on the hallowed turf

One of the smaller castle cottages, keeping watch to make sure we dont set foot on Home Park

But it didn’t stop us getting out our long lens’ to enjoy another side of her Majesty’s home

Windsor castle from the river near Datchet

The river seems to have changed again, its wider, the cruisers are huge, and we are seeing more and more residential moorings, many that appear to be in fabulous old river barges.

We couldnt find out any details but this is possibly a dutch sailing barge, over 100 years old

We moored up for the night at Runnymede.

It had been such a hot day we didnt go exploring until the early evening which meant we missed the visitor centre, (and icecream seller)

The Magna Carta, the document that still enshrines Justice into, not only our own legal system but many countries around the world have followed our example.

but we got to wander around some of the monuments and installations

I particularly liked “the Jurors” a series of decorated chairs representing the concepts of law and the struggles to gain freedoms and equalities. I like accessible art that is free to be enjoyed by all and thought provoking to those who want to look more deeply.

Having pondered the impact of the Magna Carta and its worldwide impact, we then found ourselves ascending a path known as the Steps of Individuality, only to realise we had also stepped over onto American Soil, as this “English Acre” was given to to America for the UK Kennedy memorial. (Thats one for the pub quiz)

The steps of individuality leading tothe Kennedy memorial

“The memorial is entered from the flat, but often wet, meads of Runnymede through a gate. Once a visitor, who is assumed to be a ‘pilgrim,’ passes through this gate he or she steps onto American soil and into the allegory of life, death and spirit.
The gate gives access to a pathway of 60,000 individual axe-hewn Portuguese granite setts, which rise steeply through the surrounding woodland. There are 50 steps in all, each representing an individual state in the USA. The setts can also be seen to represent a multitude of pilgrims on their progress through life to enlightenment. Each step is unique and each sett has been laid at random. The craftsmen were unable to comprehend the need for individuality, and could only complete their task when the steps were likened to the uneven appearance of a crowd at a football match.” Copied from the info board

We continued our journey back on English water, looking out for one of the very few statues of our Queen Elizabeth, but whilst she and her loyal subject might have had a good view of us cruising past, with the sun directly behind her we couldn’t see much

We had a few move overnight stops on the Thames before we reached another significant point in our journey, the confluence of the River Wey joining the River Thames.

And through Thames lock(which is on the Wey) to pay our fee to the National trust allowing us 3 weeks cruising on the Wey