Saturday
5th November, 2011
Woke early and prepared to go back to
Teddington lock to see if anyone else had booked passage to Brentford for the
morning high tide. As we are supposed to have an anchor easily available on the
tidal Thames, Robin carried the 16kg anchor,
its long chain and rope from the front bow locker, where it is normally stowed,
to the semi-trad rear deck (he sounded like the Ghost of Christmas Past as he
rattled and clinked from one end of MM to the other). Just as we were about to
leave another narrowboat called ‘Ruffian’ went by going towards Teddington.
They said that they were booked to go through to Brentford – so we got ready to
set off behind them. Then Robin’s phone rang. It was Brentford to say that
there were four other narrowboats booked through at 9:30 and we could join
them. As we were pressed for time we decided not to stop for breakfast.
We sailed back to Teddington, where we
joined ‘Ruffian’ and were soon joined by three other narrowboats. At 9:30 we
all five squeezed into the centre lock. By chance we ended up as the last boat
out of the lock – and so took up the position of tail-end-charlie for the
convoy that headed down the Thames.
Half an hour out from Teddington there was
a loud and persistent beep-beep from the direction of the electrics panel. Fearing
the worst Robin checked the engine panel, but everything was still green and it
was not clear what had caused the alarm, which stopped after 10 seconds. We carried
on – admiring the fantastic views of Richmond
and then Syon house from the river.
In just an hour we all arrived at Brentford
lock, which could only take two boats at a time, so we had to hover outside the
lock for over half an hour to wait our turn to go through. It was very
difficult to keep MM still as the wind kept taking her and blowing her
sideways.
Eventually we got into the lock (on our own
as the fifth boat) and rose very slowly. The lock keeper, who was very helpful,
explained that there was very little room to wait before the second “gauging
lock” just a few hundred yards up the canal – so there was no hurry as the
other would still be going through.
When we did go through, the two boats in
front of us were just entering the gauging lock so our timing was excellent.
Marion didn’t like either
of the locks at Brentford as they were not in a nice area and were quite
aggressive when filling.
We continued up the Grand Union
Canal and through the
next lock, where we stopped for breakfast. Well it was 1:00pm by then so maybe
we should have called it lunch. Hobbits don’t mind a second breakfast at 1:00pm
– although that is a bit late. But to have FIRST breakfast at 1:00pm, that’s
too bad. Dear me, No!
After Brunch we sailed on up to the foot of
the Hanwell flight of locks where we moored up for the night. When we had
moored up Robin discovered that the alarm that had scared us both had been the
Hurricane boiler for the central heating that had had a ‘flame out’. Robin
checked the instruction book and found that a ‘reset’ button had popped. He
reset it and the heater started working again but we need to keep an eye on it
to see if it does it again.
We went for a walk up ‘Green Lane’ past the Fox pub around the
back streets of Ealing. Remarkably the houses next to the canal are almost like
a small village – and the canal is very quiet (except that it is November 5th
so there are a few bangs about).
We phoned Jackie and Mick and Mick is
coming over tomorrow to give us a hand up the Hanwell flight of 6 locks plus 2
lifting us almost 68ft.
8 miles and 5 locks (including the tidal Thames) – 4.6 hours
Total 178 miles and 96 locks – 92.9 hours
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