Time and tide...

Two days in London, and much catching up with friends later, we set off to do the return journey west along the Regents Canal, and then down to Brentford and onto the Thames. This is a journey that, according to my magic sheet, takes 7 and a half hours. The lock at Brentford was due to be opened at 5, and they said that they would let us through until 6 at the latest. The trouble is that the Thames is, of course, tidal at that point, and passage is restricted. So I left about 8 and a half hours to do the journey – confident that even then we would have an hour of leeway at the other end.

I don’t know how Mike did that journey in 7.5 hours. I know we don’t go particularly fast all the time. I tank along, but not everyone is so blasé, and there are so many stretches of inline mooring that it is difficult to keep up much speed for long without incurring the fork wielding wrath of other boaters. Anyway, as the day wore on, it became apparent that it was going to be a little tighter than I had hoped. But still – we had 2 hours to spare. No problem. I did, however spend quite a lot of time on the back with the throttle open, taking advantage of the long deep stretches where we can get some speed on without destroying the bank.

By the time we got to the junction onto the mainline down to the Thames, it was looking more worrying. There are a lot of locks, and they are not particularly fast. So I kept the speed up. And just as we were coming up to the first lock, the engine tried to cut out.

This happened last year, although that was on the way into one of the Thames locks with other boats in it, and without warning, so the loss of brakes was a little more concerning. At least this time I knew what was happening. So I managed to coax the engine into staying alive, just. But it was a constant battle. I had to go into the engine hole in the end, and increase the tick-over speed. At least, I think that’s what I did. Whatever it was, it seems to have had the right effect. At any rate, we have been able to run the enging flat out on the river without stalling so far – so fingers crossed.

But time is busy marching on. And we are getting closer and closer to spending a night in Brentford, waiting for the tide – which won’t be favourable until the next evening, which is not good for our show schedule, to say the least.

As we are getting into our stride, we catch up with a boat, also heading down the locks. This is good news. 2 boats are faster than one – and we are quite fast at locking, anyway, given that there are 4 of us. And we would have definitely sped up the other boat’s journey, as she was single handed. Eventually we managed to communicate this, and we subsequently finished the rest of the flight in fine time. But still not fine enough for comfort. Things were not made any better by a log that was caught behind one of the lock gates in the next lock down, rendering the gap too small for two narrowboats to negotiate together. Having unjammed ourselves, we set off at breakneck speed to the electric lock before Thames lock. And the wind decided to join in the fun. Which is a little awkward, because the entrance into that lock is rather tricky at the best of times, but 2 drifting boats and sudden gusts just make it far more entertaining far all concerned.

And then we made the final dash to Thames lock, arriving at ten to six, just within our deadline. Only to be told that the tide had already turned, and what should take 55 minutes would be at least a 2 hour journey, punching the tide, and that with an engine that was threatening to cut out if we wound it up too high. Well, there was nothing for it. The next time the lock was manned was at 7 the next morning, and the tide would have been against us then, too. So the journey just had to be done. To the slight consternation of the rest of the crew. But off we set onto the Thames.

50 minutes later we were completing the formalities at Teddington, the end of the tideway. I wonder if the lock keeper had been working on GMT?