Henley on Thames

Henley on Thames
June 2019

The Thames really is the king of rivers, majestically winding its way through the historical heart of England. 

Henley sunset

And there are few places on the river which are more atmospheric and "Thames" than Henley, with its rowing clubs and massive annual regatta. 

Henley

We arrived on the eve of the women's regatta and there were groups of blazer toting ladies wherever we looked. We moored at the upstream end of the meadow, a pleasant spot within earshot the weir, and whose rushing waters set off a constant series of waves which gently rocked the boat all night. The moorings are a hefty £10 a night, but we wanted to stop in Henley and that is the price you have to pay. By the rules you should buy a £10 ticket from one of the car park machines, but of the three, two were not working and the furthest one only accepted coins. We therefore left paying till the morning then the park warden came round.

Henley regata course

After weeks of grey skies and rain the weather seems to have broken and the strange yellow orb in the sky is working wonders on the wet washing hanging on lines in the butty.

Ladies regatta Henley

By the time we got started the women's rowing event was well underway, but I was interested to note that they don't use the grandstands erected for the mens event nearer the town, a gathering which will take place in a couple of weeks. 

Temple island Henley

As this is a leisurely trip we are covering about eight miles a day, and would have liked to stop below the lock at Marlow. However the moorings were full at 4.00pm so we continued on only to see two of the moored boats coming past us a bit further down the river. We carried on and moored in a secluded spot just below the railway bridge at Bourne End, a place we have used in the past.

The course to the start

With the sun out out the casual preserve sales have picked up with a lock keeper eagerly buying a selection and later, after tying up, a historic river boat pulled up to buy - I love these spontaneous sales meetings.

Bisham

Spit and Polish

A spot of polishing

June 2019

I am not a great fan of the practice of polishing brasses. I concede that they look lovely when they are all bright and shiny, but in my book the effort outweighs the result.

A  spot of mushroom polishing on the move

However, it is important to keep the butty looking its very best for festivals, and almost exactly two years ago another boater came up to me at the Ware festival and commented than my solitary mushroom vent was letting me down.

I had to agree that the tarnished blob on the roof of the butty was not great, but countered that I had tried to buff it up on several occasions but the best I achieved was a slightly less dull surface, and had therefore concluded that I had a naff bit of brass. Not so, he proclaimed - but what you need is a metal polisher. Yeh, great - like I have such a thing on my boat.....  Well, he reflected, I happen to have one aboard mine - would you like me to have a go at it?

Shiny knob

Of course, my answer was yes so I set to with a screwdriver and removed the whole assembly from the roof. Brett disappeared and 20 mins later he was back with this amazingly polished orb glinting in the summer sun, its body still warm from the process. I was delighted and quickly reattached the vent. Since then my focus on brass polishing has ebbed and flowed but I always make an effort for show days, maintaining that the cleaning process unleashes the magic genie of commerce. 

The unlovely portholes

But as you fix one problem you tend to create another, and no sooner was I the proud bearer of a glorious shiny knob (bear with me - I am a chid of the Benny Hill generation), my portholes started to attract disparaging comments like "nice knob, shame about the portholes". Periodically I had a go at the portholes, trying Brasso, specialist polishing creams, even tomato ketchup, but nothing lifted them above the dull gleam that used to be the lot of the mushroom vent. What I needed was, of course, a metal polishing machine!

Fast forward two years and we are once again heading down the Thames aware that Karen and Bret are heading upstream in dutch barge Edith, carrying with them the elusive machinery capable of revitalising my tarnished rims. We compared notes and timed our travels so we would meet at Beale Park where we could enjoy a BBQ beside the river on a balmy summer evening. We did indeed meet but the weather took a turn for the worse and we enjoyed our long awaited barbie in true British style - under a gazebo with the rain hammering down!

Polishing in the rain

In between the showers I removed the portholes from the sides of the butty, taking extreme care not to lose the screws or the rim as I worked upside down on the river side of the boat. As a precaution I gaffer taped a bin liner to the gunwhale to catch any errant metalwork. Oddly, one pane of glass stuck firmly to the side of the boat but on the river side the glass was firmly attached to the rim.

It took more than a downpour to stop either our meal or the brass polishing and as the rain cascaded perilously close to the electric motor, Brett buffed and polished away, restoring the portholes to a level of magnificence that they probably havn't enjoyed for over 30 years. 

Happy shiny portholes!

Then is was time to put them back on the butty. The side next to the motor boat was pretty simple with the porthole slotting in easily and the brass screws bedding down neatly onto a bed of silicone adhesive. The river side was, predictably another matter altogether. I took a long look at the rim and decided which side was down, tied a bit of string to the bottom screw hole as a back up in case I dropped it, applied the adhesive sealant, and inserted the top screw. Great. The second one at the back went in ok as well, followed by the one at the front which was a tad off centre but went in with a bit of persuasion. Then it came to the last one at the bottom - the one which is really hard to reach. I poked and prodded but the hole in the side of the butty was nowhere to be found. Clearly I had applied the porthole the wrong way up and the holes were not evenly spaced.

Now I could have removed the whole thing and found the right orientation by trial and error but the sealant is horrible stuff to get off and every time I hold a screw over the water there is a greater chance of losing it. I therefore figured that as the sealant is mega adhesive and ultra waterproof, the porthole will be fine with three well seated screws and the fourth can be drilled and tapped in the winter when I am at home with the proper tools.

I think that you will agree that I am now the proud owners of some lovely portholes all topped off with a knob any chap would be proud of. 

The innuendo and smut could continue all day but I think is best to leave it there.

Wallingford

Wallingford on Thames

June 2019

We indulged in a couple of pints of Ghost Ship at the Nags Head in Abingdon, a pub conveniently located next to the river bridge which also served good quality food.

Our Thames schedule isn't exactly stretching as we have two weeks to cover the hundred or so miles down to Brentford, and our next rendezvous is with Dutch Barge Edith at Beal Park on Tuesday. We there have effectively two days of travel and time for a one day lay over which in this trip will be spent at Wallingford.

Abingdon

This is the fourth time I have navigated the Thames and it has always been a downstream run. With a butty strapped to the side our speed is much reduced and I am always curious to know how much current assist we are getting. Our typical canal speed in 2.3mph but on the deep dater lock cuts where the water is still we seem to manage about 2.8mph, compared to the 3.8 we achieve on the open river. On that basis the average current is about 1.0mph, rising in the narrows / shallows beneath the locks. I really don't fancy an upstream journey which would take twice as long and use three times as much diesel.

The journey down river was made a bit challenging by the very high winds which howled over the flat water meadows, creating a distinct chop as it crossed the strong downward current. Speaking of current, I was nearly caught out at Clifton Hampden Bridge where the current flows at an angle to the arches rather than straight through. I got myself all lined up only to find myself very close to the left hand pier and in need of an unexpected burst of throttle to get us in without a bump.

Relics of the Wilts and Berks Canal

On the subject of bumps, one of my sternest steering challenges cropped up below Days Lock. Just below the lock there is a landing jetty which provides access to a little used elsan point. The issue is that the fast flowing stream flows both under and past the jetty and a rate of knots and this is a problem when approaching from upstream. It is really hard to both stop and come alongside without a jarring crash. This is doubly complicated when a butty is strapped to the side and two years ago I made a very heavy landing. This time I made a better fist of it and came to a fairly dignified stop, but encountered hassles getting away later on. The flow presses you onto the jetty and the trees jut out 8 feet at the end of the walkway, so its a case of getting the bows out and then a  big blast of acceleration to try and get free into the stream before the butty is all tangled into the undergrowth.

Benson lock is the next obstacle, with a strong side on weir stream trying to push you into the trees on the other side of a very narrow navigation channel. Fortunately, nothing was approaching upstream and we could use the full width of the river to ferry glide across.

It was about here that we saw the most enormous yellow duck approaching, which turned out to be some sort of fund raiser for the RNLI.

Wallingford moorings were pretty full but, as in Abingdon, there was one 50ft gap on the town side of the river. The challenge here was the presence of a shiny (expensive) plastic boat at the downstream end and there is no way I want to bump into that. We travel with the butty on the starboard side of the motor and its not really practical to moor with the butty on the bank side so we needed to turn around. With so many boats present we opted to go below the bridge to wind and its always a bit hairy to be dead in the water going broadside on in a fast stream. But we made it only to have to punch a fierce flow  back up under the main arch. 

We made it back to the mooring, helped in by the narrowboat moored immediately upstream - a very welcome extra pair of hands.

History Walk videos - Droitwich Spa

History Walk - Droitwich
June 2019

With the Canal Hunter videos completed for the season I have been having some withdrawal symptoms. I have therefore decided to make a few history walk videos as I find suitable material during our travels.

The first walk is around Droitwich focussing on the impact of the Salt trade on this small community. I actually filmed it back in May just before the St Richards Festival, but I hit some technical snags getting it uploaded.

A work around was found when I was last at home so here is a link to it:

History Walk in Droitwich

Hopefully a few more history walks will follow over the summer.

All aboard for Abingdon

Thrupp to Abingdon

June 2019

What a wet week!

We have spent nearly a week moored at Thrupp, starting with a weekend with our friends Fi and Andy. We decided to do the Oxford "mini ring" and went out onto the Thames at Dukes Cut in what turned out to be incredibly windy conditions. Had I known that the wind would be so strong I would have stuck to the canals which do offer a bit more shelter.

Back onto the Thames

On the plus side, we were waved through Godstow Lock with instructions to pay our license fee at Osney Lock, but as we were turning in at the Sheepwash Channel it meant we had out short excursion on the river without paying a toll. We moored opposite the old Jericho boatyard and by misfortune it turned out to be hosting a street party night, with loud live music playing till 11.00pm. So with music ending late and the railway marshalling yard starting early we didn't have the best nights sleep.

Riverside really does mean riverside in Oxford

We then returned to Thrupp and then back to Birmingham for a planned visit home. It turned out that we couldn't have timed our trip better. It rained all the way home, rained all day every day we were there, and rained all the way back to Oxford. All the rain has scuppered lots of river based plans in other parts of the country, but thankfully the Thames Catchment has been largely spared. 

Our time at home was devoted to jam making, this time Strawberry and Elderflower, Strawberry and Raspberry with Raspberry Gin and Goosberry. There was supposed to be  a lot more Elderflower jams, but you can only pick the flowers in the dry - and we didn't see any if that!

Cormorant airing itself on Dukes Cut.

After returning the van to the very convenient Enterprise site on the London Oxford Airfield site, we waited out the last of the bad rain, used all the Thrupp services, and then set off back down the canal heading for Dukes Cut.

I guess it was the break in the drizzly wet weather, but suddenly everyone really NEEDED jam... so our departure became something of a process with the sam store going down and the cash box filling up.

On our return to the Thames we found the water levels ok, but the flow rates well up. It's a good job out journey is downstream. We were toying with the idea of paying an upstream visit to Lechlade, but given our slow speed all those winding bends we decided to leave it for another time. In the end we simply went down two locks, paid our EA dues for two weeks and stopped just above Osney Bridge, next to the allotments on the island. On the subject of fees, last time we were here there was much confusion about how to approach the butty. At that time it was classed as an unpowered craft and attracted a fixed fee of about £25. This time its a houseboat and cost about £40 - which is 50 % of a motor boat of the same dimensions and is consistent with CRT policy and is therefore fine.

Loads of these today

Our plan is to drop down the Thames in 10 mile stages so today's (Saturday) objective was Abingdon. Being the weekend there were a lot of rowing boats out and about but very few powered craft. One boat I noticed tied up beneath Oxford contained a bee hive. We are often asked if we supply honey and our stock answer is that the bees wont follow the boat - but maybe this off the cuff answer is wrong?

Bee hive boat

Further down the river at Nuneham Railway Bridge I was idly watching the trains cross when there was a rumble and a blast and, would you believe it, the Flying Scotsman came past, steam billowing, pistons pounding and whistle screeching. Of course, I didn't have my camera to hand to capture the fleeting sight of green crossing the river!

Heads of the River, Oxford

I was not entirely surprised to see Sue and Vic on No Problem XL moored above the lock as I had been following their progress up river for the last few days. I had, hiowever expected to see them somewhere on the meadow below the lock.

With poor weather forecast (again) we decided to stop in Abingdon  and were warned to avoid the "camouflage boat" beneath the lock on account of the generator they seem to run night and day. In the end we moored just downstream of the bridge, doing a slightly ungainly 360 degree pirouette to ease ourselves into a 50ft mooring space - the only one available in the park.

We like Abingdon - the pace we first learned to play six handed rummy.