Thursday 3rd May
With the Thames still in flood we had to stay at Brentford again today as we had expected. One narrowboat went down to Teddington, at his own insistence, but apparently he was not allowed through Teddington Lock and is now having to sit it out there – at £5-50 per night mooring fees!
This morning we popped to Morrison’s for a few essentials (wine) and a paper. When we returned we decided George needed a walk. There aren’t any pubs near here where we can take him so we just took him down the towpath to the footbridge which goes to the park at Glaxo Smith-Kline and back. It is roughly a mile there and back and took him about 40 minutes but he seemed to enjoy being out and about. We finally took his bandage off on Tuesday and his ‘stump’ was a bit red and weepy so we kept him in but it has now dried up nicely. I don’t think he is even aware there is no claw on there! To minimise the danger of him scraping it on the path or damaging it any other way we decided to put one of my socks on his foot and secure it with vet wrap. So out he went sporting a very nice green and black striped sock and red vet wrap!
After this little excursion we thought we would walk to Richmond Lock and have a look. B and B had said they may come with us but when we left Barbara was on the phone (probably a long job) so Barry said they would meet us in The London Apprentice later. It is about 2-5 miles to Richmond Lock from here, we went through Syon Park again, along the river bank at Isleworth for a bit then the Thames Path/Capital Ring veers away from the river. It returns to the riverside at Richmond where you can cross the Thames by footbridge. The river was pretty high as the tide was still coming in when we got there and in the short space of time it took us to go to the footbridge, look at the lock and come back the path we came on had started to get flooded.
We walked back to Isleworth in the company of a very nice lady who was a mine of local information and went in the pub. We had been there about 30 mins when B and B turned up. Barry said it was the most expensive one he had been in so far. We have been in a few others which were on a par with it and not such good ones. The London Apprentice is a nice pub with good beer and the view is worth the extra. As I said before, the food is very reasonable though.
So we still await the go ahead to get on to the Thames. Barbara is going to phone Teddington direct tomorrow morning and we’ll see what happens.
I am astounded! Right outside our boat is a BW information board and in front of this board just now was a young, hooded lad having a pee against the wall, in broad daylight and in full view of me, unbelievable!
