At the end of September 2024 the heavens opened, the Thames flooded, and the river was closed to traffic. My friends Paul and Mary managed to make it to Abingdon where they abandoned ship – their mini narrow boat. They left it looped to scaffold poles driven vertically into the bed of the river so the boat could rise and fall with the waters and neither sink nor float away.
Come November Paul found time to rescue the boat and sail it to its home moorings some way up the Gand Union Canal at Castelthorpe, not far from Milton Keynes in Buckinghamshire. Unfortunately he need someone to assist and I was press-ganged into service.
Now I have sailed with him on the Thames before, but that was in Summer. This was in November and the boat had no heating. That was for fun. This was with the serious purpose of getting the boat home as quickly as possible. When they abandoned the boat at Abingdon Paul and Mary would have driven home in hardly more than an hour. At other times of year Paul and I might have sailed back via the Oxford Canal in about a week. However, the Oxford Canal was closed for Winter lock repairs so we were obliged to take the long way round. This meant descending the Thames as far as Teddington Lock, where the tidal Thames begins, pausing for slot to pass through, sailing quickly down to Brentford and entering the Grand Union Canal to head North. We arrived at Castlethorpe eighty miles and another seven days later. Altogether we sailed for twelve days and travelled one hundred and sixty miles. And – just to remind you – it was November and the boat had no heating.
It was particularly chilly on the water. Even our modest few knots sent icy tendrils past my snood and down my neck. The autumn seemed more advanced on the trees along the river banks than those I’d driven by on the way up to Abingdon. The river was still flowing strongly. As we made ready to leave, a flotilla of grey-lag and domestic geese swept down using their feet as rudders held out behind. No need to paddle.
Our journey on the Thames was dominated by bridges, increasingly posh buildings, and locks of course. Fortunately the locks on the Thames are all electrically powered. You only haves to work out which buttons to press, and in which order, to open, fill, empty and close them. Still, even that was a challenge as no sooner had I got used to one arrangement than the next lock had a different layout of buttons. The journey on the Grand Union was all locks, all of which are manual and there are lots of them. But more of that later.
*
First, bridges. We began our journey at Abingdon Bridge – or rather, bridges.
There’s an island in the steam at this point and the bridge shown is generally known as Burford Bridge, while the bridge on the other side is Abingdon Bridge proper. Except that its more complicated than that. Apparently there are three Bridges – Hart or Town Bridge, Burford Bridge and Maud Hales Bridge – all three built in the early 15th century. They have all since been altered and re-built – including the creation of wide central arch in Burford Bridge, which replaced three medieval pointed arches. The most recent re-build was in the 1920s, which involved replacing some failing arches with concrete and then sticking the stones back on the outside. Still, some of the original remains and it’s a Grade II listed structure.
*
I have a personal connection with the next bridge that caught my notice. Clifton Hampden Bridge was built – of specially fired local brick – in the 1860s by the local Lord of the Manor, Henry Hucks Gibbs. It was designed by Gilbert Scott, whose many Victorian neo-gothic constructions include the Midland Grand Hotel at St Pancras Station and the Albert Memorial. Hence the fine brickwork.
Before the bridge there had been a ferry, although the river is shallow here so that horses could usually be ridden across and cattle driven. However, the shallows seem to have been what led to the bridge being constructed. In 1862 the Lord Mayor of London was sailing ceremoniously downstream from Oxford when his boat got stuck on the rocky bottom of the Clifton Hampden reach. Weirs had to be opened upstream to release him. It all took some time and was probably very embarrassing. A few years later a new lock and weir was constructed so that the water could be kept at a navigable level. But then the horses and cows couldn’t get across. A bridge was called for. Gibbs therefore had it built, financing the whole project from his own pocket.
The Manor sits just beyond the church of St Michael and All Angels, which Gibbs also restored. As for my personal connection, my friend Terry was Head Gardener at the Manor for a number of years. The house and gardens lie above the river at the top of the cliffs, which rise on one side of the river only. They are steep, wooded and cut with diagonal paths which access the river and a boat house. Terry managed the garden, an orchard, meadows and a number of woodlands. At the same time, he noticed – by eye or by ear – every bird that flew or floated by on the river or lingered in and around the property – and beyond. We stood at the top of the cliff on one occasion and he confidently identified birds singing in the fields on the further side of the river perhaps half a mile away. This is a skill which I have long envied. However, I need do so no more because I have now cheated and installed a bird song identification app on my mobile phone.
Terry was employed by the then current Lord of the Manor, Christopher Gibbs – descendant of the bridge builder. He was a well- known London antiques dealer and had been a leading fashion and aesthetic influencer in and on the swinging sixties. He had also been a friend of the Rolling Stones. I mention this last point in order to introduce the notion of Six Degrees of Separation – which is that we are all no more than six steps away from knowing anyone else. I have never met the Stones of course but I know someone who knows someone who has. And that’s only three steps. Four steps and I’ve reached The Beatles – and they’ve all met the Queen. And so on. And I’m not even famous.
*
Moulsford Bridge carries the main railway line from London Paddington to Wales and the West. It was built by Brunel, chief engineer, designer and constructor of the Great Western Railway, and completed in 1840.
It crosses the river at a rakish angle and the span of its brick arches was considered bold. However, Brunel produced other bridges of a similar design and they are all, I believe, still standing. It was built wide enough to take two lines of Brunel’s unique broad-gauge track, which had its rails an enormous seven feet apart. This was later abandoned in favour of everyone else’s more modest Standard Gauge, a mere 4ft 8 ½ inches apart. However, even then the width proved insufficient when the line became that busy that it required doubling. They therefore built a second bridge very closely adjacent to the first. This means that Moulsford Bridge is in fact two bridges. Unfortunately you can’t see this from my photo so I recommend you have a look at the relevant entry in Wikipedia, where the photos are much more informative.
*
Enough of bridges. Posh buildings instead :
There are many fine houses along the banks of the Thames, but this one – as we approached Reading – struck me as particularly delightful. It is clearly post-Victorian but not yet modern, which makes it Edwardian I suppose – with a touch of Arts and Crafts; and classical of course – the cupola atop the tower. The thing is, I have built similar houses myself. Not actually with bricks and mortar, but with a once popular toy construction system called Bayko.
The name comes from what it was made of – Bakelite, one of the earliest commercial plastics, most familiar perhaps from the mottled brown cases of old valve radios. Bayko components came in colours though – maroon, green and cream as well as brown, then red and white – and in a post Edwardian, not yet modern, with classical references, style. It was launched in 1934 and spread across the British Commonwealth, surviving the Second World War and calmly carrying on until 1967. By then I had inserted innumerable metal rods into base-plate holes and slotted brick panels, doors, windows and classical balustrades between them, before finishing the buildings off by delicately balancing a variety of roof parts on top without dislodging brick panels below. You could only make buildings. Actually, you could only really make houses.
Then I discovered Lego . . .
*
Talking of Classical, this is the folly on Temple Island. It was originally built in 1772 as a fishing lodge for the nearby big house – not as a place of worship. It was not thought of as a folly at the time, but posterity has taken a different view. Mind you, at least this one had a practical function. Many were entirely decorative and even built as mock ruins.
Personally, I’m a Goth when it comes to grand architecture. The medieval cathedrals, the Houses of Parliament, Victorian Railway stations. In the 18th Century, the neo-Classical was all the rage and although the neo-Gothic, or Gothic Revival, challenged it mightily during the 19th century, it has never gone away. Indeed, there are a handful of neo-classical houses recently built in our rural village. This might be okay located in an extensive park landscape with lawns, meadows and trees surrounding, but not when squeezed in between other people’s homes and occupying the plot from boundary to boundary. (Yes, there has been much grumbling).
In fact, the Houses of Parliament, and many railway stations, are a mix of the two styles. The principal architect of the new Palace of Westminster, Charles Barry, was obliged to work with Augustus Pugin and have his classical plan heavily decorated with Gothic detail both inside and out. Incidentally, the building took nearly five times longer than planned to build and cost getting on three times the original estimate. Anyone would think it was a nuclear power station, or HS2.
The contemporary importance of the fishing lodge/temple/folly is that it is the official starting point of the Henley Regatta. The Regatta – a rowing competition – is one of the main events of the posh end of the English social ‘season’. It is a place to be seen and to drink Pymms. Ladies are encouraged to wear hats. Men must wear ties or cravats. Fortunately for us it takes place in July as we were dressed in heavy gauge windcheaters and I had a woollen snood around my neck.
Before you conclude from the mention of July that rowing races are for softies, we ran into the middle of a rowing event just as we approached Hampton Court Bridge – in November. We were obliged to moor up for a couple of hours until they were finished. This turned out to be a good thing. It meant I could do the only sightseeing there was time for on our journey – I visited Hampton Court Palace – and Paul could devote himself to reading without me constantly trying to start conversations on interesting topics. He was having none of that for the whole journey. We listened to interesting music instead, via his mobile phone, but only in the evenings. In the mornings he would wake me up with what he considered to be a joke – my childhood favourites, Cliff Richard (Summer Holiday !), Herman’s Hermits (I’m into something good – huh !) and the Seekers (I know I’ll never sail again with you).
At the entrance to Hampton Court I was met by a number of uniformed staff. “I last came here in about 1964”, I said. “On a Sunday School outing. It hasn’t changed a bit.” I considered this to be at least vaguely amusing. They were kind enough to smile, but then one of them – a gentleman clearly even older than me – replied that he’d first come here in 1963, on a Sunday School outing. They let me in anyway.
I headed at once for the famous Hampton Court Maze. It was the only thing I actually remembered from my childhood visit.
This is the entrance. I didn’t go in. As a child, I had gone in and found my way out again – obviously – but now, as an adult, I did not trust myself to go in and still have time to see the Palace itself. Or indeed to find my way out at all. I left the maze and entered the Palace. What struck me most about the interior was how horribly cold it must have been in Winter, and gloomy, lit only with candles and oil lamps. And this was the King’s house. Lord knows how my peasant ancestors survived. As for the exterior, in terms of architectural styles the Palace is a bit of mix. It is Tudor from the front, with its plethora of twirly brick chimneys, and Classical from the rear. It was originally built during Henry VIII’s reign in the first half of the 1500s in Tudor style. It was then altered and added to in the late 1600s by William III in the Baroque style, a classical pre-cursor of neo- Classical proper.
I preferred the front.
*
But I have got ahead of ourselves. Before we came to Hampton Court we sailed past Windsor Castle.
Architecturally speaking, the Castle has something for everyone, though fortunately the classical aspects – baroque and (worse still, rococo) are more or less confined to the interior. In any case, they do not spoil the essentially Gothic appearance of the Castle seen from the surrounding town and countryside, including from the river. This happy happenstance is the result of its many additions and extensions generally keeping to its original style even when contemporary fashions – especially Georgian and Victorian – were applied. The Castle started off as a Norman motte and bailey fortification – a mound with a keep on the top – built by William the Conqueror. It was soon expanded, and a palace added inside. It is the biggest castle in Britain and the longest royally-occupied palace in Europe.
I once stayed in Windsor Castle – I was attending a conference – in rooms above the Henry VIII Gateway, the public entrance into the Castle. The window looked out over the yard of the Lower Ward, where Guards in bearskins performed their ceremonial Changes, and stood at attention while being photographed by tourists. The uniformed gentleman-warder who led me into the rooms pointed out some scratchings on the window glass which could, with some persuasion, be interpreted as the initials AB. His story was that Anne Boleyn must have scratched them herself while awaiting her fate. A policeman at the Gate told another, probably apocryphal, tale about an American tourist who asked why the devil they’d built the castle under the flightpath to Heathrow.
Beyond the Castle the Thames runs for some distance beside The Home Park where black range rovers patrolled and stern notices forbade landing. A string of poplar trees planted along the bank were thickly festooned with pom-poms of mistletoe.
*
Before moving on to locks, I must mention the Egyptian geese we met all along the river, and moored beside, somewhere near Shepperton.
The Thames is dripping with geese along its freshwater length – greylag and Canada as well as Egyptian (Alopochen aegyptiaca). The former were in flocks, the Egyptians generally came in pairs. They are non-native of course, being originally from the Nile and all points South, as well as West across the Sahel. They were introduced into Britain as ornamentals as long ago as the 17th century, but they must have been slow to spread because they were only added to the official British Bird list in 1971. They are found mostly in East Anglia and in the Thames valley but are now considered to be threatening the Midlands. Being foreigners, they are allowed to be shot if deemed to be causing a nuisance. They are also not geese. They are most closely related to the native Shelduck, which is not a duck . . .
The Thames is a hotbed of non-native species. We also saw mandarin ducks (Aix galericulata) – another ornamental, originally from East Asia, and the ubiquitous rose-ringed parakeets (Psittacula krameri) from India which rocket and screech not only along the river but across suburban South-West London and even into leafy Surrey. Not only are they foreigners, but they were, according to urban myth and rumour, introduced by foreigners. The myth is that a pair were released by Jimi Hendrix when he was living in London – which is exciting, but without foundation. In any case, the rumour is more likely – that some folks from the Indian sub-continent kept them as pets and reminders of home and that some, inevitably, escaped.
Canada geese (Branta canadensis) are also non-native of course. They are another 17th century introduction, first to St James Park in London when a few were gifted to James ll, although some arrive under their own steam from their North American homeland. They are now spread across most of Britain and their numbers more or less match those of the greylag (Anser anser), Britain’s only native breeding goose.
*
As mentioned earlier, all the locks on the Thames are electrically powered and operate by the pressing of buttons. This was not always the case, as I recalled as we went through Cleeve Lock, just upstream from Streatley and Goring.
In the Summer of 1965, the lock-keeper at Cleeve was assisted in the opening and closing of his traditionally manual gates by my brothers and I – ages eight to eleven. We applied our mighty frames to his gates with gusto whenever we could be there. We were on a camping and caravaning holiday nearby. The lock-keeper was kind enough to pretend that we were actually helping.
*
We left the broad and shining Thames at Brentford via the Thames Lock, the beginning of the Grand Union Canal (unless you’re starting from the Birmingham end). It was at once a different world. Narrow, urban, shaded and unkempt – although some of the unkempt was delightful. Untended lock gates had become gardens.
Then we came to the Hanwell Flight. Six locks, like stairs, one after the other. Very picturesque. All manual.
But this was only the beginning. I didn’t count the number of locks we enjoyed the next day, but I did notice that we were travelling back in time, with each lock clearly dated the year or so before the previous one. The following day, from Common Moor to Boxmoor in the environs of Hemel Hempstead, we traversed seventeen manual locks. And the same again both of the next two days – plus a manual swing bridge somewhere along the way. Mary met us for lunch somewhere. We dined at The Boat public house. There was no escape. I lost count of the locks, and of their dates. Confusion set in. There was no clear order. I remember Paul announcing that we had now reached the highest point of this part of the canal and it would henceforth be downhill all the way. But I was not so addled that I didn’t know that downhill makes no difference at all in terms of getting through locks. There are still up to six sluices or paddles to raise and return by manual crank and four gates to open and close by leaning hard and pushing. And all in the correct order. Its not that I did every lock. Paul definitely did one or two. However, we agreed that it was more efficient with him in charge of the boat – as befits the Captain and more experienced sailor. Anyway, I had been press-ganged. I knew my place.
*
We finally arrived at Castelthorpe and our vessel’s home mooring on day twelve. We had confronted and overcome thirty locks on the Thames and eighty on the Grand Union. We had sailed about ninety miles on the Thames and some seventy on the Canal. We had no heating. It was November. We even had to tackle a wrecked and abandoned, fifty foot narrow boat which was blocking the canal and which I forgot to mention earlier. Best of all though, somewhere on the Thames we had the delight of a half second glimpse of the curving back of an otter.
Would I do it again ? Only if Paul fixes the heating.
*
