It was another early start today, and 10 or 11 locks. We plan to reach Teddington at about 14h00 and will stay overnight there. I was quite emotional about it. For years we had discussed this trip; the UK leg and then onto France. It felt like it was never going to happen but we persevered and we finally said goodbye to Portsmouth and came round the bottom of England and up the Thames. On Friday 30 August 2024 we got to Teddington and as a complete co-incidence we would be back there 1 year later. It has been a mixed year and I didn’t want to spend too much time unpacking it all, but needless to say it felt like we had been on the Thames River for much longer than 1 year!
The weather decided to co-operate and it turned quite sunny. The lock-keepers on the other hand all seemed to take the day off, so it was a full exercise day for me but its not too bad in the sunshine. We ate while underway and we got to Teddington easily.
Patrick then asked “why are we waiting around?” He had a quick check on tides and times and suggested we keep going. We could get to Richmond lock for the tide (we can only go through that lock on high tide) and then it would be a few hours until we reached St Katherine’s dock. So we did just that. We had to hang around Richmond for about an hour for the tide and met up with a fellow boat festival traveller. He was heading to the show and so we travelled in tandem, which is always nice. We got to St Kat’s by about 19:00 and settled in. It was a lovely trip down, passing all the iconic buildings and parts of London that we only knew from “the land”.