Friday
4th November, 2011
It rained all night but in the morning the
sky brightened and we even had blue sky and sunshine. Went through Sunbury lock
and Molesey lock and passed Hampton
Court Palace.
Moored up for lunch at the end of Hampton Court Park, just before Kingston Bridge.
Continued on up to Teddington lock where we
moored at the visitor’s moorings just before the lock. We walked to the lock
and saw the lock-keeper to get a one-day Thames EA License and to check on the
passage for Saturday. He said that Brentford was only working on an advanced
notice basis – so we must check with them before proceeding. Back at MM we
decided that the mooring was too noisy as it was opposite the wier, which was
very loud. So we backed MM down the cut (she does reverse so very well), turned
round and sailed back about a mile to Steven’s Eyots (island), where there are
EA visitor’s moorings. On the way we called Brentford and left our details on
the answer-phone as instructed.
On Steven’s Eyots we moored up next to a
very new looking wide-beam dutch barge called ‘Josephine’, whose owner said
that he was going to Limehouse through Teddington lock in the morning. Later in
the evening we saw his tabby ship’s cat on the prowl. One look at us though and
she scuttled back to her wide beam home.
The original idea was that once we heard
from Brentford we would call Jackie and Mick, who had offered to come over on
Saturday to help with the tidal Thames
transit.
In the end we did not hear anything from
Brentford lock – so we talked with Jackie and Mick and agreed that it didn’t
make sense for them to come over if we were not sure of being able to get
through.
Went to sleep to the explosive lullaby of
Guy Fawkes fireworks.
10 miles and 2 locks – 3.6 hours
Total 170 miles and 91 locks – 88.3 hours
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