Oldies On Tour

Whilst we were wandering around Brentford I noticed a historical plaque in the lock area and after reading it I was surprised what has taken place in Brentford in the past.

Brentford has been a familiar area to the west of London to most of us, and probably this is an area few of us have visited other than passing through, as indeed have I, yet unbelievably this place has a formable history.

The archaeological objects found in this area go back to the Bronze Age, long before London was started. Brentford being the confluence of the rivers Brent and Thames and sufficiently up stream was shallow enough for people to walk across. This was also the place where Julius Caesar and his army battled a Celtic Chief by the name of Cassivellaunus at the start of the roman conquest, 54BC. It didn’t end there; in 1012 Edmond Ironside (King of England) defeated the Danes and it still doesn’t end there, in 1642, another “Battle of Brentford” was fought, this time between the Royalists and the Roundheads and the result of this defeat ensured Royalists never got back into London. Probably the last and significant point of interest was the starting of the Grand Union Canal, here in Brentford.

The beauty of travelling at a steady pace of around 3 miles per hour is you have time to register parts of England you would normally just bypass, our history, our heritage, and the beautiful countryside.

Leaving Teddington after a comfortable night we headed west. We certainly weren’t in any hurry and our target was to reach Hampton Court; this is where we had agreed to meet Christine’s friend, Jane. We were very lucky to get a mooring alongside Hampton Court, a 10-minute walk from the Station.

Beautiful buildings

The old village (again bypassed) was a very quaint narrow street, lined with antique shops and restaurants; naturally we couldn’t let the moment pass so enjoyed a super leisurely lunch at Zizzi’s.

Next Day Jane arrived and the afternoon was taken up by a visit to Hampton Court Palace; the Palace Henry 8th confiscated from

Entrance to Hampton Court, we were moored very close

Cardinal Wolsey. All of us had visited the palace in years gone by so decided it was time we re-visited it. We all had a wonderful afternoon, I enjoyed the history and the girls enjoyed the ambience and the gardens.

Jane and I went in the Maze, which was fun to try and get out.

We were away at a leisurely hour the following morning heading for Windsor; we had decided that by Monday the crowd would have gone and we would be able to moor by the bridge, as we did the last time we were there.

Windsor Castle, such a lovely place

Yes, we were lucky, our space was waiting and we arrived in time for us to visit the Castle and grounds. Fortunately the queue wasn’t too long to get tickets so joined it. Ha Ha, once inside the queue snaked around the big “room” in the time old tradition until we paid for our tickets, great, but no, now we queued to go through security, very similar to an airport, everything in a tray, belts off, but this time, hands in the air!!!!!

St. George’s Chapel, where the wedding took place two days ago

About an hour later we were in, all we now had to do was collect our audio guides and we were off, well, once we managed to sort the audio guides out that is.   We walked in the right direction to find the first number, which we did but couldn’t get the audios to work so we kept walking and eventually found a castle worker driving a golf cart full of returned audio sets, so

Round Tower at Windsor

we stopped her. She agreed mine didn’t work and replaced it, Christine couldn’t get the a picture on her and the reason was it was pre-set for a blind person and Jane, well I’m afraid to say was operator error. Now we were off, and our priority was to visit St. Georges Chapel; the girls wanted to see all the flowers, only to be disappointed, they had been removed and when we enquired, were told they had been removed and distributed to hospices and the like, at this point all was satisfied.

Formal gardens at Hampton Court

Visiting the castle, and in particular St. Georges Chapel 2 days after Prince Harry’s wedding to Meghan Markel was good, as we could relate to the television pictures.

Again, I was more interested in the 2000-year history of the castle but this all fell upon deaf ears, as far as the girls were concerned!!!

The following day we continued the tourist bit but before this,

Changing of the guard at Windsor

Christine and Jane walked across the pedestrian bridge into Eton, I think there was a bit of voyeurism, they wanted to see the boys dressed in their school uniforms, i.e. their morning suits. Back to the boat and we all trooped up the hill to get a good spot outside the Castle main entrance to watch the troops

Marching Band, so smart

marching up the street with the band, and then into the castle for the changing of the guard ceremony.

Back to “Meg” heading up the Thames passing many very expensive riverside pads until we arrived at “Bray Lock”; in we went, no problem, well not with us. The hydraulic pipe controlling the lower lock gates split and the gates couldn’t be closed and after a ‘phone call by the lock keeper to their control centre, we were informed it would be a couple of hours before an engineer arrived to replace the hydraulic pipe, oh dear, so we broke out the wine bottle.

The engineer did a magnificent job and we were on our way well under the two hours forecast, this was good but meant we had to rush our wine!!!! Now time was marching on so stopped just before Isambard Kingdom Brunel’s magnificent “Maidenhead railway bridge”. This is the bridge that was predicted to fall down when the first train rolled over it in 1839. The reason for this gloomy forecast was the

Maidenhead Railway Bridge

construction was revolutionary; the spans were far too wide and flat for traditional engineers of the day. Here we are, 179-years later moored just by it watching today’s trains run over it and it is as solid now as it was then.

We spent a quiet evening waiting for a knock on the roof asking for the mooring fees mentioned on a sign on the bank, but no one turned up and when we left the following morning heading for Marlow, still no one had come, a bonus to us!!!

Tuesday 8^th May

 One of nice things about being on these canals is, “no rush”; start when you want, finish when you want, mooring doesn’t appear to be an issue, virtually anywhere along the towpaths.   Today was no exception, tea in bed with the breakfast news, a little nourishment to kick the day off, all very leisurely.

As we approached the first lock, the disused Buckingham Branch canal went off to our right and all we could see were several narrow boats moored up there, but for how far, we know not. There was also a sign asking for volunteers and funds for the restoration trust; this trust has been formed to bring this canal back into use.

A family of ducks so cute!

Prior to our first and only lock today, we stopped to discharge you-know-what at the designated building, cruised into the lock, dropped down and that was it, we just

A heron, not worried about us at all.

cruised along admiring the local countryside, seeing a number of “Mrs Ducks” with her babies, and herons waiting to pounce.

Apart from the unusual gothic bridge we went under yesterday, the other remarkable engineering feet here is the “Cosgrove Aqueduct”, a cast iron trough went over the river “Great Ouse’, 40ft below and built in 1811. Before this engineering solution came into being, there were 9

The Iron Trunk over the Gt.Ouse.

locks taking the canal down to the river then bringing it back up.

Christine had identified a large Tesco store at Wolverton, and Google maps said it was fairly near the canal, so that’s where we headed for.   Three miles later we arrived, this re-generated area had new apartments and a very splendid canal side with mooring rings embedded to ensure passing boats

Meg was parked, whilst we went to Tesco.

stopped.

Walking through this regenerated area we were reminded of Wolverton’s heritage, the railways. In 1836 Wolverton was chosen as the site for the locomotive build and repair centre as it was the

Old picture of the locomotive factory

midpoint of the London and Birmingham Railway. Building Engines ceased in 1863 but the area still continued to build railway Carriages, including the Royal Trains. Manufacturing and maintenance continued until 2013, when the last remaining part of the business went into

Murals painted along the tow path, they were quite spectacular

liquidation.

Back on board and off we went, meandering through the countryside, loving every minute of it.

We did have one issue yesterday; the shiny new washing machine didn’t seem to work correctly. It lets water in OK but doesn’t pump out; oh dear, just our luck and being a bank holiday we couldn’t contact anyone; still we kept going south!!!!   Today we made contact and arranged for someone to come out tomorrow. We moored near a bridge with road access, sent the bridge number through and now we wait.

Another lovely evening on the canal, let’s hope tomorrow is as nice as today.

Friday 4th May

After a major Tesco shop, we arrived back to Meg A Star early afternoon; now complete with washing machine.  Whilst Christine stowed away all the food etc., I returned the hire car and now we were now ready for the “BIG” off tomorrow morning.

Saturday 5^th May

Stowhill Wharf to Stoke Bruerne 7 miles

After a comfortable night, we topped up the fuel, replaced an empty gas bottle, filled the water tank, had breakfast and we were off.

Unfortunately we were heading North and we wanted to go South,

Summer has arrived. Yeah!

still, fortunately there was a winding hole about 1/2 a mile up the canal.

Mission accomplished and we were now heading south.

So pretty, this is what I miss living in Spain.

Today’s run was very simple, no locks but a tunnel. We stopped for a lunch break before tackling the Blisworth tunnel, a little short of 2 miles and zero lighting. We had encountered a tunnel the last time we were on the canals, but that one was much shorter; fortunately we had a good spotlight as well as navigation lights to see and be seen.

We entered the tunnel, dark, gloomy and cold, so we quickly donned fleeces but unfortunately we hadn’t realised it would also be wet.   As we passed the vertical air vents, we were drowned by so much water pouring down; there was no escaping these deluges, still once we were wet through, well what the heck, get on with it!!!!!

We had a boat about 50 meters astern of us, and going through tunnel we passed 4 boats coming the other way.  Just as a matter of interest, narrow boats are 6ft 10 inches wide, two abreast, passing are a smidge under 14 ft., but the tunnel is 15 ft. wide, not a lot of space so dead slow is the order of the day.  Anyway, about 1/2 an hour later we came out of

Stoke Bruerne, such a pretty place

Blisworth tunnel, unscathed and into brilliant sun; we had arrived safely at Stoke Bruerne, so moored at the first available space we could find.  We were lucky; we were only about a 4-minute walk

View of curry house

from the Locks, pub and Museum.

Blisworth tunnel is the third longest on the inland waterway system and took 12-years to build, opening in1805, 5 years after the Grand Union Canal was operational. During the 5 intervening years, canal boats used to unload their cargo at the wharf in Blisworth, transport the goods over the hill and re-load other boats at Stoke Bruerne, rather hard work so when the tunnel opened this stopped but the hard work was still there. There is no towpath so boats had to employ “leggers”; Legging is a method of moving a boat through a canal tunnel containing water. This method of navigating through canal tunnels has been commonly used in canal tunnels during the 18th century.

After sorting ourselves out we wandered down to the locks where there were numerous gongoozlers watching the various boats travel up and down this lock whilst enjoying drinks from the Boatman.  It was a beautiful hot day, most unlike usual UK weather, and seeing people relaxing with drinks, our guard dropped, we succumbed to drinks, oops!!!!, our first for two

Geoff enjoying a pint!

weeks and very welcome.

Back to “Meg” for dinner and a quiet night in, believe it or not we were knackered.

Sunday 6^th May

Stoke Bruerne 

This morning, Mark Paula and Ashleigh arrived armed with bread and bacon, we had the butter so Christine made Bacon Butties; wonderful, especially as we had ignored bread for several weeks.  Oh dear our diet has gone out of the window and worse is to come tonight.

The family left around midday and we did a few jobs, but no beer at the pub!!!

Stoke Bruerne is a typical Northamptonshire village; a hamlet of houses built in the local sand stone, and apart from a couple of Restaurants, 2 canal side pubs; not to mention the canal museum, nothing else. The two claims to fame are 1/. Stoke Bruerne was mentioned in the Doomsday book and 2/. The canal cuts the village in half.

Our friends, Jeff and Hillary arrived just before 1800 hrs. for aperitifs before we went to the Indian Restaurant at Stoke Bruerne lock.  Our day has just got very much worse but we had a good evening with lots of laughter.

We waddled back to Meg quite late so straight to bed, we move on tomorrow.

Monday 7^th May

Stoke Bruerne to Cosgrove 6½ miles

Funny trees seen in route

After breakfast we started, straight into the first of the 7 locks at Stoke Bruerne.  Christine was on form, we whistled through the first 5; I took over the last two, and believe it or not, another boat caught us up so I had help, much to Christine’s annoyance, ha ha!!!!

Once out of the locks we cruised for 6 miles, passing numerous

Rape Fields, lovely scenery

fields of yellow Rape Seed, jersey cows with their calves who looked us up and down, families strolling along the towpath taking in the sun, all as we cruised past. We stopped for lunch around midday and a

Cows enjoying the canal

telephone call to Christine’s proposed builder, if she gets the house she wants!!!  Later we arrived at Cosgrove and moored just passed a gothic designed

Beautiful gothic bridge

bridge. This most unusual bridge is unlike normal canal bridges, just built out of red brick.  This bridge over the canal was built in the 1790’s at the insistence of a local landowner, the Biggins family, this canal was started at both ends; London and Braunston, and it met here at Cosgrove, hence the special bridge. Another unusual feature in Cosgrove is the “Horse Tunnel”. In the days of horse drawn boats, instead of building a bridge to change sides, here they built a tunnel and now this is a grade II listed structure.

We had a short walk to the next lock, as according to the Waterways guide book there is a small local shop; it was closed!

Walking along the towpath, the canal crosses over the Horse Tunnel, already mentioned.

The canal So back to the boat and relax in this hotter than hot afternoon and a cozy evening.