More adventures on the tidal Thames

Happy New Year to everyone. I was lucky enough to be invited to help crew on Bleasdale last week. I met up with St Pancras Cruising Club for the briefing and discovered that only four boats were travelling this time (unlike the seventeen that went out last summer). The purpose of the journey was to attend the boat show at ExCel. We started out shortly after 9am in pouring rain. Nine locks and three hours later we were soaked to the skin arriving at Limehouse. We had no time to stop as we were booked through the Three Mills and City Mills locks so had to press on. It stopped raining and the skipper had time to change her socks :-). The Thames was quite tame and although I didn't do much helming on this journey I did take her through the Thames Barrier and past the Woolwich Ferry. We moored close to the Emirates Airline (cable car) North side of the river. There were NO other boats in the dock for the boat show which is such a shame.

The Boat show doesn't have much for narrowboats but I enjoyed looking around the £1.6 million Sunseeker gin palace. I also had a cap made with the name of my boat on it! We all had a good time, staying for four nights and enjoying looking around an area I knew very little about. We had a tour of SS Robin, a 350 ton 1890 steam coaster, which is being restored at the Royal Docks and will, hopefully, be based there permanently when completed. It is the oldest remaining steamship in its class. There was another boat moored close by the ExCel and that was the Yacht Hotel. We went for a drink on board and it was reasonably priced. We also had a look at a typical room on board and it was very nice, much better than staying at an ibis or travelodge :-).

I met up with family on the Sunday for a meal at Covent Garden after which some of us went to Canary Wharf to have a look at the Winter Lights. These were installations of various light artefacts by artists. I liked the infinity pool and the heat bench while Hollie liked the pink fog and the light bench. It was very cold though so we didn't hang around for too long.

On Monday the wind was gusting and we weren't sure whether we would be allowed to transit the river. However, by 1.30pm we were given the okay and set off around 2pm. The wind seemed to drop miraculously as we reached the Thames and, as we were with the tide, it didn't take long to reach Bow Creek. All went smoothly and we tied up at Limehouse at 5pm and soon went searching for refreshment at The Grapes (amazing fish and chips, too).