Last Full Day In London

Stewart and Jeanette had a big day planned for me for my last full day in England. Firstly Stewart had a chauffeur job to pick someone up and then take them to Heathrow Airport. So he dropped Jeanette and myself off at a tube station and then went and did his job. Jeanette and I caught the tube to the stop before Heathrow and when Stewart completed his drop off he drove to meet us there and we went off to Penton Hook Marina at Chertsey, where we boarded Stewart & Jeanette’s boat and we took off for a day’s boating on the Thames.

We were heading for Windsor which is up river from Chertsey. On the journey which took about three hours we had to pass through five canal locks. These are used to regulate the height of the river and to control the changes in the tidal differences on the Thames.


At each one of these Jeanette and myself had to tie off the boat to the lock side and then either take in the slack of the ropes or gradually release the ropes as we either raised or lowered inside the lock.

All along the river were homes with private mooring spots in front of them.


A thatched cottage with mooring up for sale....

In other spots there were public mooring spots at park lands and near town centres, pubs or shops.

At various places along the river were pathways with a lot of people, walking, cycling, running, feeding ducks etc and plenty of people who moored their boats and were having picnics on the riverbanks.
As we got closer to Windsor we came up to an area of crown land which is part of the Queen’s estate at Windsor Castle.

Windsor Castle with Eton School Rugby Grounds in the foreground

Arriving at Windsor village the place was packed with people and we had to firstly find a place to moor the boat and then walk a while to get to the place where you were required to pay 4 pound for a 24 hour mooring permit.Today there was a horse race meeting at Windsor racecourse and a lot of the people going to the races come to Windsor and catch a cruise up river to the racecourse. We had good lunch at a local hotel and then walked along the river bank back to where we had moored the boat.

From the river you can see Windsor Castle

The return trip took the roughly the same length of time except at one stage we had to help out a small boat whose outboard motor had stopped and they had drifted into the riverbank on a small island and were stuck. We pulled them out from the island and Stewart was able to help them get the motor going again to which they were very grateful.

A steam driven boat

We returned to the marina about 6.30pm and whilst we were driving back to Stewart and Jeanette’s, (as it had been a long exhausting day being a deck hand!!) I had a quick lap in the back of the car.

When we got home I had to repack my luggage for tomorrow’s travel to Orlando and then fill in the forms for the tea chest I am having sent home by a company who arranges to forward boxes of unaccompanied personal belongings via sea mail. Then I edited my photos from today and looked at some emails and answered them before heading off to bed.

I do not know what access I will have to the Internet when I get to Orlando but I hope I will be able to get Wi-Fi access at the resort I will be staying at. So therefore I should be able to keep posting these notes daily. That's all from London.