Goodbye MSO
Monday, December 24, 2012 at 09:00PM ..and merry Christmas!
We are sadly, not spending christmas on Misterton, but in the next best thing, we are barge-sitting 'Rival', a similar sized Dutch barge for friends Brett and Sandy.
To go back about 10 days, I arrived on the morning of friday the 14th december at MSO at low tide.
There wasn't much to do at this point apart from go and have breakfast at a local cafe. High tide was at about 3:00pm, so I wanted to leave at about 1:30pm in order to get the last of the flow to help push us up to Teddington. Our friend Hannah was going to come with me, but needed to attend to something at the last minute, so Sandy once more agreed to accompany me on a trip. We left at about 2:00pm after saying goodbye to Jake and the MSO team. We'll miss going down there, the quality of the work was worth it, and Jake even made me a coffee on the day of departure.
I steered us out of the river Brent and onto the Thames, but then asked Sandy to take over steering so I was free to pace about the decks and fret about being out on the river in heavy rain. To that end I'd lit our old oil navigation lamps, which added a festive glow to the proceedings. I think Misterton was pleased to out on the water again, as she seemed to be moving along quite nicely. The half tide barrier at Richmond came up quickly, but the gates were lowered and we were straight through.
The tideway itself was quiet, we only saw two other boats on the way.
It had rained most of the way up but as we approached Teddington the sky cleared a little and the light looked very atmospheric with mist and shadows. I took over steering again as Sandy (an artist) wanted to get some photographs of this strange winter afternoon light.
As it was a spring tide, Teddington locks only needed to raise us about 2 inches to match the level of the non-tidal Thames and we were soon moored up just past the footbridge.
This, unfortunately, is where we still are as heavy rains mean the river is in flood and unsafe for navigation. We have 10 days for it to slow down, otherwise we won't be able to get back home due to winter lock closures.
A scheme that depends on the British weather - What could go wrong?
Reader Comments (4)
Best of luck with the weather.
Bill Kelleher
If the river is still on red boards, I'd be surprised if the lock closures will happen exactly as planned.
Talk to the Environment Agency, if you can, between Christmas and the New Year.
Good luck and happy Christmas!
Thanks Bill and Bob, its got worse since I wrote the blog entry, but it can't last for ever!
Anything happening?