Brentford to Paddington

Brentford Basin

We departed Brentford on Friday as arranged in company with David & Jenny on Roman Lady, to negotiated the 10 locks to Bulls Corner where we were to turn off onto the Paddington Arm.

We soon had a good system going with Jenny and I on the boats and the men having the exercise....just how it should be!!

Half way up the middle flight of 6 we passed what was the old Hanwell Asylum, now a hospital

Bath al fresco??

We passed one or two interesting sights in a stretch of canal that was in parts littered with debris although the water itself was incredibly clear. We managed o reach the top without picking up anything on the prop but Roman lady were not so lucky and just after the top they had a stop to clear the weed hatch.

Modern Sculpture

A short distance after the last lock we moored right outside Tesco to do a stock up and then turned down the Paddington Arm for the few miles to moor by the Black Horse Pub. We had arranged to pick up Gile, Susannah, Ella & Boe there for the trip the next day into Paddington.

The forecast was not brilliant but since it said the rain would hold off until the afternoon we decided to go. By the time everyone was assembled we set off about 11. The forecasters were correct with what was to come but out on their timing...the rain soon came!!!!

Initially there were gaps in the rain and during one of them we pulled into a rare patch of green to let Ellie off as we did not anticipate that it would be very convenient for her once we reached Paddington.

A little help from Ella with mooring up

Giles & Geoff stayed on the tiller the whole way, latterly in the cold wind and rain, whilst the rest of us stayed warm below...we did feed them occasional cups of coffee...

Junction with Paddington basin to right and Regents canal straight ahead

When we turned into the basin we discovered it was very full of narrowboats and the only place to moor was on the outside pontoon to the right of the large boat seen in the picture. We could only get the front end onto the pontoon and had to tie the stern to the large boat. Since it was pouring with rain and blowing hard it was no easy feat. Luckily we had Giles with us and he was able to do the required scrambling up onto the boat There was no sign of life on any of the other boats. After a latish lunch Giles departed to collect his car from the Black Horse. This was required to transport everyone including Ellie. She has now gone to stay in Greenford with Boe for 3 weeks whilst we are around London.

When they had all gone Geoff and I battened down the hatches and retired early to bed exhausted!

Sunday dawned sunny at first although the wind was still howling through the basin. One of the boats on the inside departed so we moved into his place. This was achieved by Geoff using a lot of wellie...he's much better at that sort of thing than me! We even had to remove the flowers from the roof as they were blown over.

We then departed for St James Church in Sussex Gardens. This proved to be High Anglican with lots of incense and a brilliant choir and organist, very uplifting music. There were only 4 in the choir but they were all professional musicians. A huge church with a very interesting history see http://www.stjamespaddington.org.uk/home.html