Monday 7th May
Brace yourselves, I have a lot to say!
After nearly a week of waiting at Brentford for the Thames to go down, we finally got the go ahead today. Before we went I took a load of washing to the launderette and had to use 3 machines – at £4 each! I didn’t dry it all because I would have been there all day, I just dried the essentials and brought the rest back wet, so my shower room currently resembles a Chinese laundry!
Talking of showers I used the one in the facilities block again this morning, remembering to leave the curtain open this time. It’s amazing how much more smoothly these things go if you can actually see what you are doing!
After a lengthy water stop (things were getting critical) we made our way down to Thames Lock by 1-45pm and as we had been told the tide would be right at 3-15pm Ken and I snuck off for a swift pint in the Brewery Tap, which we could see from the boat. It was a swift one too because Barbara phoned at 2-30pm to say the lock was open and we could go! We rushed back and went out on to the Thames at 2-45pm. From Thames Lock we went to Teddington Lock. There was a lot to see (and photograph) along the way including the Queen’s Barge Gloriana, which is currently moored at Richmond Bridge, a magnificent sight.
There were us two and another boat, which had been waiting at Brentford for as long as us, going up the lock at Teddington and we went into the Launch Lock. There are 3 locks there, the huge Barge Lock, the conventional Launch Lock and the tiny Skiff Lock. A few minutes later and with the water level hardly changed in the lock we were let out again. We had been advised to moor up just upstream of Kingston Bridge on the Hampton Court Palace moorings.
This was easier said than done, just managing to see where they were was a challenge as they were under 2ft of water! B and B, who have been here before, were thrown by the fact that the moorings were not visible and we crept along after we went under Kingston Bridge while they looked for them. Eventually we worked out where they were, a clue was the other boats who seemed to be moored about 6 ft from the bank with their ropes disappearing into the water!
When we came near to the bank I could see the rings and a walkway down in the murky depths but I needed wellies to get off the boat. I had to extract them from the weed hatch locker which Ken was standing on at the time! We decided I would get off the boat, get up on to the bank and Ken would throw me the centre rope so we could get in to the side and start tying up. I wasn’t sure how deep the water was so I sat on the side of the boat and lowered myself in. Fortunately I had about 2 in of welly top to spare. Between this walkway and the bank was an overgrown area of about 3ft and then the bank which was sloping. I didn’t notice there were steps up the bank so I decided I would have to climb up it. I stepped gingerly off the walkway towards the bank and although it was solid it was squidgy so as my foot sank in I thought I was going off the side.
I scrambled up the bank and Ken threw me the centre rope to hold the boat in while he got his wellies on too. Meanwhile a really nice, fairly elderly couple, offered to help me by holding the centre rope while I got back down in the water and located a ring (soaking the sleeve of my coat) to put it through. Fortunately the rings are painted bright yellow making them a bit easier to see. I managed to get the rope through one (soaking the sleeve of my coat again) and passed it to Ken on the gunwhale and he tied it up. The old couple then helped me moor up the front as well.
The chap who had left Brentford at the same time as us was trying to moor up a bit further behind us and having got his wife on to the bank to hold a rope, proceeded to remove all his lower garments, except his boxers (thank God) and went in to the water to tie up!
With our boat tied up to an underwater concrete walkway but with the actual bank at least 6 ft away we then had to turn our attention to the problem of how to get George off. His gang plank is not long enough to reach from the boat to the bank so we had to find something to balance it on. Barry said he was going to use bags of coal for his so we decided to do the same (see photos) and with some difficulty Ken got them off the roof, along the gunwhale and rolled them down the gangplank to me so I could pile them up in the water. I think we had to use 4 to get enough height and another one to stop the gangplank from slipping forward, good job we had plenty!
Soon after we got that all sorted out the water level dropped dramatically, like someone had pulled the plug out. Had we have arrived about an hour later we would not have had such a job to moor up! However we would have still needed the gangplank/coal bag arrangement to get George off though because the boat is too high above the walkway for him anyway, it’s too high for us really!
As we have gone to all this trouble to moor up here we are going to visit Hampton Court Palace tomorrow.
