Weybridge

Here I am Rune

Distance 10.8 miles

Total 1983 Locks  90 Tunnels

Running total mileage 2808.6miles

A cruise along the Thames is always quite a pleasant experience, which is probably why people will pay for boat trips to the likes of Hampton Court. Today was our free boat trip on the Thames. Slightly miffed to find out that had we cruised on for another 20 minutes last night the mooring would have been free (as opposed to the £8.90 that we paid) but we had a decent meal out last night so I suppose that is some compensation.

The trip took us through Kingston upon Thames and on to Thames lock where the River Wey leaves the main river. We got the weekend shopping as we passed though Kingston although the Waitrose there is a bit confusing, the entrance is marked ‘John Lewis/Waitrose’ but once inside it was difficult to find where the Waitrose supermarket actually was. Turns out it was in the basement although not all of the lifts went down that far.

Upon arriving at Thames Lock is seems that there has been a gate failure in that some of the rotting wood at the bottom of the gate has broken away and rather rapidly drained the lock. This was about 10 minutes before we arrived but ultimately it works to our advantage. The system here is that you can buy a 1 day pass to get from the Thames to the Basingstoke Canal but if we’d bought it today it would expire tomorrow whereas we don’t want to be on the Basingstoke until Sunday. Now we can buy a transit licence tomorrow when the canal is re-opened and the transit licence will last us until Sunday when we can buy the Basingstoke Canal licence.

Hampton Court Palace as we passed it.