Merry Christmas cruise

As I get out of the marina too rarely and am not a huge fan of Christmas celebrations anyway, I decided to go on a little Christmas cruise with my friend Carsten from Germany, who is similarly minded and came over upon the promise of good food and hot drinks on the boat.

We set off from the marina near Southall down to Bulls Bridge and turned left in the direction of Brentford. Quite soon we reached Three Bridges, which is a little canal attraction. The canal goes under a road, but under the canal there is a deep railway cutting.

Three Bridges - road, canal, railway

The Hanwell lock flight down to the river Brent is in quite a nice setting, but the locks are not in a good shape. They are deep, hence the gates are big and hard to handle. At each lock at least one paddle was broken. On top of that the canal had a lot of rubbish in it and also lots of branches from cut back trees. All this stuff got stuck in the locks everywhere. We shared most of the locks with a single-hander. At one point the men even pulled a huge log from the water. If that had gotten stuck in a lock, there would have been no chance to operate it anymore.

Our lock buddy

Hauling a log

A bit further down I repinned a boat whose stern was across the canal blocking most of it. The designated mooring "pin" on the boat was a piece of sodden wood wedged behind the piling. No wonder this had come loose. I'm afraid my repinning may hardly have survived us going by.

Brentford basin

Coming into Brentford around 3.30pm all the visitor moorings in the basin were taken. So we turned round and moored under the slightly dystopian shed a bit further up. This is the strangest place. It is an official visitor mooring space, but it's in a kind of industrial ruin. Apparently it has gotten a bit of a makeover but I can only assume that they must have run out of money as it has no roof!

Christmas Eve in the shed

Murals on the wall in the shed

Moored next to a lifeboat with ... another lifeboat in tow

We spent Christmas Eve in the shed and cooked a lovely Christmas dinner.

Christmas day was a bit drizzly but we wanted to have a look around so walked down to the Thames past the Thames lock, where the Grand Union meets the Thames. Beyond the lock on the tidal section there is a very impressive boatyard with several floating dry docks. The boats there were huge compared to the canal boats.

Thames Lock

A huge barge on the tidal section

Floating dry dock

Boatyard at low tide

Rule Britannia

Routemasters in Brentford

Later in the day we went back up the locks. Nobody had been through in the meantime, so they were all still set in our favour from the day before.

In the Hanwell flight

As the weather was taking a turn for the worse, we tried to moor up early just beyond the top lock of the Hanwell flight only to find that it was too shallow to get the boat into the bank. It proved quite difficult as coming in at an angle to moor the increasing head wind caught the side and pushed the bow across the canal into the trees on the other side (we almost lost the chimney!), while the stern was grounded on the bank opposite. It took some shoving with the pole to get us off. Probing the depth with a pole, we finally found a place deep enough in time before the rain started. Mooring had to be quick in order to avoid being blown off again.

Boxing day started with glorious sunshine and crisp cold, but our weather app forecast rain from 2pm. So we decided to make the most of it and make our way to Uxbridge. But first of all a trip to the weed hatch. A whole knot of plastic bags intertwined with twigs wrapped tightly round the propeller took a while to get off, unsurprising with all the rubbish floating about.

Sunrise in Southall

Fighting with the plastic bags

After freeing the propeller we made our way past Bulls Bridge up the GU to Uxbridge. As the weather was going to turn any minute, we decided to stay there rather than be stuck in bad weather in the middle of nowhere further up.

Sunshine in Hayes

Sure enough it started pouring down soon and never stopped until the afternoon of the next day. It even snowed for a bit. We had planned to go on for one more day, but the weather was so bad that we staid put in Uxbridge and spent the day indoors instead.

After that, the next day was again glorious sunshine and cold.

More sunshine, this time in Uxbridge

Frozen water on the railing

In the morning we witnessed a horrible swan drama. A family of swans with two adults and three teenagers in tow sailed by all serenely when suddenly from the back two other adults came along all flapping and posturing. They grabbed one of the teenage swans, one jumped on its back and the other grabbed its neck in its beak and pushed it under water. They were clearly trying to drown the poor swan, who was terrified and screamed. Strangely the rest of the family didn't do anything. The little one tried to escape out of the water between the boats, but didn't make it. The two swans chased the little one up the canal away from us, so we couldn't see it anymore. But we could hear it scream for a while. I don't know if it escaped, but chances are they actually drowned it. I have no idea what that horrible scene was. Normally swans are so protective of their young, maybe the youngster didn't belong in that family?

After this slight shock in the morning, we made our way back down toward the marina, stopping over at Cowley lock for a lunchtime walk and a great burger at the Malt Shovel. I never knew that there is such a pretty lake very close to the canal.

Bloody gates won't stay closed

Cowley Lock

The Malt Shovel at Cowley Lock

Little Britain lake

The rest of the day was an uneventful trip back to the marina. We took turns in steering and making tea so that we could at least warm our hands occasionally. Cruising in winter is fun, but four days was enough this time.

Looking forward to spring now!