It was a really lovely morning first thing. I took Macc up to the country park for his early walk, and even our mooring looked rather nice.
We’d agreed with Nick and Fiona on Tumba Rumba that we’d go up the lock together. There are time restrictions at the moment to save water, so we wanted to be at the bottom at 9 when they opened. When we both got there the padlocks were already off so we could set off up the hill. A man moored below the locks was keen to help with the first one, so I was able to go ahead and set the next few, getting the gates open on the next two and draining the fourth one. It meant we made speedy progress up the locks.
At the sixth lock, the top of the Hanwell Flight, there was a cat that I thought was going to jump on board at one point.
We had done the six locks in an hour, which is good going. There’s then a slightly longer gap before the next two locks. In between is Three Bridges, where a road goes over the canal which goes over a railway.
We had a slight pause at the next lock because a CRT work boat was coming down. The guys told me they were taking it to Brentford to support a litter pick over the weekend.
There was a volunteer lockie at Norwood Top Lock so we were soon up that one. Above the lock the duckweed looks awful. It parts as you go through it but then closes up pretty quickly behind you.
Near the CRT yard at Adelaide Dock there’s a bubbler across the canal. This stops the progress of the duckweed, although whether that’s it’s main purpose here I’m not sure.
It’s a long old slog on the level through Southall, Hayes, and West Drayton — and the whole section has little to recommend it. One of the few landmarks is Bull’s Bridge Junction, where the Paddington Arm goes off. Not for us this time though.
Our locking partners were carrying on up a few more locks to a marina, but we wanted to stop near Tesco at Yiewsley. The moorings which have rings were busy, but we slotted into a decent space a little way before the junction with the Slough Arm. I immediately made a quick dash to Tesco to get something for lunch, as we’d run very short. After lunch we spotted the fuel boats Tadworth and Bordesley coming past, so we flagged them down and filled the tank.
The price was £1.45 basic per litre, which I suspected was a bit more than another option, Denham Marina, which we’d been planning to stop at tomorrow. But I looked up their website later and found their price is £1.43, so not that different. We like supporting the fuel boats, and it means we won’t have to do the manoeuvre onto and off of the fuel point tomorrow. For Macc’s lunchtime walk we went over the junction bridge and followed a path to a park. I was surprised to see that one of the hedges was almost entirely hops.
We took the same path further on to come back onto the Slough Arm towpath, and then back to the junction bridge, where there’s one of the Slough Arm mile posts.
This afternoon I went back to Tesco to shop for the next few days, and then Adrian headed to the nearby Aldi to top up wine supplies. We’ve now done over a hundred miles on our quest to go north, and are still much further south than we were when we started!
7 miles, 8 locks. (105 miles, 46 locks)