We’ve ended up doing more than planned today, of which more later. We can highly recommend the moorings by Bridge 17A: Marnham Fields is a good place for dog walking, even if the A40 is quite close. We set off about 9, with the skies a bit cloudy and the breeze rather stiff. There’s very little to report along this stretch, especially as we did it less than a week ago. We stopped at the water point by Bridge 20 to fill the tank, knowing this was a nice fast tap. Then it was on to Bull’s Bridge Junction, where we turned left towards Brentford.
It was just as well we didn’t need to stop at Tesco opposite the junction for either shopping or water. The water point and the moorings, which are signed as limited to one day, are all full of boats that appear to have been there for some considerable time. There’s very little to recommend the stretch down towards the locks either, but at least when we reached Norwood Top Lock a volunteer lockie opened the gates so we could go straight in.
Our original plan was to go down the first two locks and then moor up, but there’s been some chatter on the Canal World Forum about the Hanwell flight, and this pound in particular, losing water overnight. Adrian asked the lockie what he thought, as he said he was primarily there to run water down, and he wouldn’t recommend stopping there. As we approached Norwood Bottom Lock, there were two boats coming up.
As we left the lock, an CRT workboat was heading our way, so Adrian opened both gates for them. Our intended moorings, below this lock actually looked rather nice. But neither of us fancied having to go to run water down late in the evening or in the night, so we decided to carry on.
The bridge in the middle of this pound is called Three Bridges, because there’s a road over the canal, and the railway (or an ex-railway these days) goes under both of them. It’s difficult to get a photo, especially from the boat.
There were two boats coming up Hanwell Top Lock, one being the hotel boat, Duke No3, which we last saw at Stockton Locks.
The towpath at the top half of the flight has a big brick wall alongside, because this was Hanwell Asylum. The site is now Ealing Hospital. There are some nice old buildings too.
At one lock we met a widebeam coming up, and one of them had a tremendous jet of water from the lock wall so there must be a big void behind it. I had to make sure I kept it away from the portholes, which are all open at the moment. Another lock has a lovely cottage alongside.
There was a boat coming up the bottom lock too, so we’d done well with meeting boats. Also there, a school group was being taught about how locks work.
One of the CRT volunteers with the school group wound a paddle and opened a gate, so we were soon down and avoiding the silt washed into the canal from the River Brent, which flows in just below the lock. The first set of moorings was pretty full, but there was plenty of space round the corner before the next bridge. The bank is very high though, because this section is actually river so can have a lot of extra water in it.
It was gone 1pm by the time we were secure, so Macc had his lunch and we had ours. We’re now a day ahead of schedule though, so I tried to change our booking for Thames Lock at Brentford. I couldn’t do it online so I phoned, but the CRT guy was unable to do it either. Maybe it’s fully booked, or maybe there’s no staff to do it tomorrow. Either way, we’ll have to wait until our booking on Saturday — so tomorrow we’ll either stay here or move down to Brentford and hope there’s somewhere to moor.
This afternoon I took Macc just along through the next bridge, to where there’s access to another big area of parkland called Elthorne Park. He loved being able to go off the lead, and we found a big deer sculpture.
The top of the hill also gives great views of the planes going in to Heathrow, which is very close to here. Macc was hot and exhausted when we got back, so he had a long drink, we put his cool mat in his bed for him to zonk out on, and he had a few frozen carrots. It’s turned really warm again, and we’re also hearing that another heatwave could be on the way.
7 miles, 8 locks. (17 miles, 8 locks)