Another bit of the Capital Ring and our first boat trip of the season!

Today we decided to do the Richmond to Osterley Lock part of the Capital Ring walk. It's a fairly short part, which starts at Richmond Lock, follows the Thames downstream past two landmark pubs, the Town Warf and the London Apprentice, past Syon House and then from Brentford Lock following the Grand Union Canal to Osterley Lock. As it was low tide (and the Thames below Richmond is fully tidal with a more than 4m tidal difference), the river was quite 'empty' at some places, like here near Brentford:





When we arrived at Osterley, we noticed that there was a boat in the lock! As real 'boaties', we immediately went to investigate. Of course one gets talking in such a case and the friendly skipper invited us for a short trip to the next lock, which we happily accepted. So that was our first boating trip for the year. In 4 weeks time we plan to be on 'Onbekommerd' and start our six months boating spell ourselves. The skipper of this canal boat (not really a 'narrowboat' as it was 60 ft long but 10ft wide), lives permanently on it!




Going up the 'Grand Union Canal'

After turning the boat around at the next lock, the skipper (and his crew) went into the local pub. We walked back to Osterley and took the underground back to Kew to watch two six nations Rugby matches on TV.