Onto the Wey and Arun Canal

Monday 17^th October, 2011

A very pretty morning with the moon still high in the sky.  After an early start, we went through Eton and Windsor.  Our breakfast stop was by Windsor Home Park with a view of the castle for breakfast. The Royal Standard was flying, so we assumed HM was in residence and we expected Her to open a window and call out “Nice boat! Can the corgies and I come for a ride?”  However, she didn’t; she must have been washing Her Hair or something………….

At Penton Hook Lock, we stopped for lunch. As we approached the lock at 1:00pm, the lock switched  to “self-service” and the lock-keeper left for his lunch. He had been kind enough to close the top gates and open the top sluices for us before he left to fill the lock. It seemed to take a long time for the lock to fill – until Robin realised that the keeper had left one of the bottom sluices open as well!!

We continued down the Thames to Shepperton Lock, where we turned off onto the River Wey.  Here we parted company with nb “Strathmore”, who had been our companion off and on over the past few days.

The entrance to the Wey is an extremely tight right-hand turn; you almost have to double-back on yourself.  This is followed immediately by a stop-lock and a very deep, intimidating 8ft 6in lock, fortunately operated by a lock-keeper. As we draw 2ft draught, he had to flood the stop lock to raise the level by a foot so that we could get into the main lock. All this was watched with great interest by two delightful, eccentric characters (see photo above).  There was a boat coming down the lock and they warned us that the Wey and Arun locks going up are very aggressive, with strong currents generated by the gate paddles. This indeed we found to be the case so when going up we very carefully only opened the paddles a few inches at first. In fact there was another lock almost immediately with another very sharp right-hand turn; this one was unmanned, so we took our time.

The Wey and Arun Navigation is owned by the National Trust so we had to pay a separate licence (£98 for 21 days). The lock-keeper also lent us a special paddle key which was slightly longer than normal. We moored up for the night outside the Pelican Pub at Coxes Mill just past Weybridge.  Robin popped in for a glass of wine “Just to be sociable”!

16 miles and 10 locks – 7.2 hours

Total 91 miles and 40 locks – 35.1 hours