with blogging, I always seem to be on the back foot ...
anyway, we left Teddington on Thursday last week (23rd May) at about 10:30 ... we're not going far and want to give moored boaters at our destination time to move on.
I am 100% sure that this line of boats are not paying £10 a night for being here.
Pretty houses on our right as we cruise, looks like the same builder/architect too.
Chalets on Trowbridge Island
Approaching Kingston Rail and Road Bridges ... our proposed mooring place looks very busy today
Admiring the Swan family
I can see a new mooring sign over there ... but no, the sign states that 'By mooring, anchoring, or remaining stationary at this location .... you agree to pay £200 per day ...
No Thank You!
It looks like boaters may have moved on this morning but the spaces left either side of this one are not long enough for us. We cruised past slowly to see if there was anyone onboard that we could ask to move forward or back to make space and suddenly see a guy appear from behind the boat indicating that he'd move it along for us ... Result!
We spent just to one night at Kingston and moved off the following morning at 9 o'clock
Huge new pontoons have appeared just upstream of Kingston ... for longterm moorings perhaps or replacements for the many trip boats along this reach?
The 'slum' boats (not my term) are still taking the mick, I don't understand why it's taking so long for the Environment Agency to get them off the river, they're not licensed and are not safe either.
Thanks to comments left on my blog post written on our way downstream by KevinToo, Jenny on nb Misty Dawn and Carol on nb Simply Messing I now know all about these lovely old, fascinating buildings at Thames Ditton.
If you'd like to find out more about these buildings and a very important discovery ... see here and here and here
Hampton Court Palace ... is actually two palaces ... the one we're passing here (above) is the later palace built in the elegant baroque style, designed for William III and Mary II joint reign by Sir Christopher Wren and (1689-1702)
The first palace is Tudor built by the Knights Hospitaller of St John in the 14th century with these wonderful chimneys and later owned by King Henry VIII
Where the two palaces meet.
No stopping for us at Hampton Court today and we continue through Molesey Bridge and lock ...
where more of 'those' boats are illegal moored ...
such a comparison to Dave Gilmour's beautiful floating studio Astoria built in 1911 which has been looked after by this chap for years ... today we actually got a wave from him!
George decided we'd go past Taggs Island on the right ... much more interesting than the 'other' side.
Sunbury Lock next ... and there's a queue!
We make a snap decision to see if there are moorings available around the top of Desborough Island so went right at the lock cut ...
There's lots to see as we cruise ...
There are the moorings ...
and they were empty so we pulled in ...
It really is a lovely quiet place to stay ...
but we decided that after lunch we'd move on ...
through Shepperton Lock where we had to wait in the queue while boats came out ...
and no stopping at Thames Court either ...
that'll do for us though!
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