On to Brentford

Denham Deep Lock to Brentford – Sunday 26th October
We woke up to rain. Which stayed with us to Brentford.
We were up at about 6:30 by GMT, but 7:30 by the clocks on the boat, which we hadn’t reset from the clocks going back last night.

We had breakfast, got ready, then Alan went to start the boat – nothing. Had our dodgy starter battery finally bitten the dust? Alan went and dug out a multi-meter, but found it wasn’t working, fortunately David seems to carry a complete workshop around with him, and had a multimeter. It turned out that the starter battery wasn’t in too bad a state, but more research suggested a dodgy connection, which was quickly fixed and we were on our way.

Above Uxbridge lock we passed Baldock and Tafelberg - but it was too early to go and knock on peoples' boats. There is a strong outflow of water from the right below the lock, and there isn’t anywhere you can easily pick people up as you exit the lock. This means that you don’t get a good run at the outflow and are in danger of being pushed into the dutch barge which is moored opposite. However, we managed it, then at Cowley lock we were watched down by a posse of police officers who suddenly appeared.

Then we had several miles of lock free canal. I was steering while Alan was in the shower, David was on the back, chatting to me, when we noticed something orange in the canal, and what seemed to be a pallet. Since we had left most of our kindling at home, and already considerably spent over the odds for a tiny bag of firewood it seemed like a good idea to pull the pallet out. We slowed down and David fished it out and put it on the roof to dry in the rain. The orange thing turned out to be a life ring. I’m always keen to return any found item to its rightful owner, but we could see nowhere that this object might have come from, so it ended up on our roof too. At this point Alan came out after his shower, and was horrified to find a pallet on his roof, and was all for throwing it back in.

At Norwood lock we needed the anti-vandal keys, and while I got the lock ready David and Alan took a hammer and pincers to the pallet on the lock side, discarding into the rubbish anything that was too heavily filled with nails. The anti-vandal measures on these locks are the hardest to use that we've yet come across - it always surprises me that each different area makes up its own versions of thing.

A lot of the Hanwell flight is alongside the old ‘mental asylum’. Notice boards explain that in Victorian times the asylum was completely self-sufficient, producing vegetables, fruit and animal products. Anything that was surplus to requirements was taken out by narrow boat and sold – there is an old bricked up archway where the boats went in and out. Alan has only been down this section of canal once, in 1971 when he and his brother Mike retrieved a boat for Wyvern Shipping at Leighton Buzzard. Alan had a part-time job for Wyvern, and one of their boats which was on the “Thames Ring” had been abandoned because of flooding. Alan and Mike went to fetch it back to Leighton. He remembers going up past the asylum as being quite unnerving, it still has a disconcerting air today.

Alan lockswheels back past "Asylum Lock", with parts of the old asylum in the background.

Chalice in "Asylum Lock", I liked the unusual lock cottage.

What surprised me was the considerable amounts of very high mesh fencing which accompanies the walls of the asylum and carries on further down the flight. It is very high, and has a curved top, to stop people climbing over it. It also seemed to be sectioning off various ‘compounds’, but it was hard to see because of the tall brick walls of the asylum. It reminded me of Winson Green Prison that we passed in Birmingham this summer, despite the fact that there seemed to be some kind of housing in amongst all the fencing. I eventually stopped a passing local couple and asked if the fences meant that there was a prison here now, but they said categorically no, and suggested that it was anti-vandal fencing. They must have extraordinarily athletic vandals around here.

The route into Brentford is very attractive, but I don't think I've ever seen quite so much rubbish in the locks.

We arrived at Brentford, but there were no mooring places, fortunately Blackrose had already said that we could moor next to him if there were any problems, and as we pulled up next to his boat he appeared on the front deck to catch a rope thrown to him. He’s been very helpful including lending us local maps to find the station so that David can get back to uni tonight.

Brentford moorings are attractive housing on one side, old factories on the other, and right under the flight path to Heathrow.

Exactly one hour after putting David on the train at Brentford we received a phone call from him saying that he was walking up from the station to his accommodation at the university.

13 locks, 12.41 miles

Total locks: 55 , total miles: 34.4