Remembrance Sunday, Teddington Lock, Nov 2019

On Remembrance Sunday the CKC team were joined by members of the Meridian Canoe Club (MCC) for a leisurely paddle from Kew Bridge to Teddington Lock, and back. With our new-found friends from Bexleyheath (home of Delia Smith, Roger Moore, Shelia Hancock, Jo Malone and Kate Bush, among others), the upper Thames put on a startling display of autumnal gorgeousness to give us an almost picture-perfect paddle, worthy of some of the JMW Turner best paintings of the area.

Starting out at 10:30am the joint CKC and MCC teams met and introduced themselves after a short safety briefing, and then we were on the water. Tim, David, Sandie, Sandrine, Phil from MCC were joined by John, Mike, Rachel, Paul, Jacquie, Lorna, Liza (stand-in for Olwen), David and Tudor for the 20km paddle.

Assembling after Kew Bridge we headed up to Brentford in winds of F1-2, and without a cloud in the sky. Liza was trying out her new NDK Explorer boat and looking very much the part, as was Phil.

Passing the pink house (a key landmark for rowers), we stopped for a two minutes silence at 11:00am outside The London Apprentice at Isleworth. After we had de-layered some clothes due to the unexpected warmth of the day, we paddled around the back of Isleworth Eyot. Although David seemed pretty happy to wait for the London Apprentice to open.

Unfortunately, there was no time to hang about and we pushed onto towards Teddington, passing some bizarre boats on the way, one that looked more like a UFO:

On the way Lorna was able to rescue a coconut from drowning and paddled the rest of the day with it on her deck – claiming it as her own ‘Wilson’, or was that Tom Hanks?

With a relatively strong flow against us for the last 20 minutes, due to the amount of rainfall, we arrived at Teddington at 12:30, tied our boats together then proceeded to lunch at the Tide End Cottage pub in Ferry Road. As the tidal river ends at Teddington, the pub is well named. However, the sign outside also celebrates the involvement of boats from Teddington in the 1940 Dunkirk evacuation in World War 2, where a huge flotilla of 700 ‘small boats’ rescued British soldiers from Dunkirk over 10 days.

As well as the history, they do a smashing sausage and mash at the Tide End.

Once fed and rested we prepared to leave Teddington slipway, avoiding the weir and travelling back passed the Lydon School. There were also unsubstantiated rumours that the Teddington Obelisk was sighted, which marks the official limit of the PLA authority, but there was no conclusive proof of that sighting.

Passing the Teddington War Memorial and Radnor School, Lorna looks good:

The herons nesting at Richmond kept an eye on us as we went under Richmond Bridge too.

And although not quite to the standard of JMW Turner’s painting , Richmond Bridge still looked the part as we paddle under it:

On the way back the tidal stream was quite strong (HW was 13:35 at Richmond) and we were able to make it back 40 minutes quicker than the outgoing trip. That made this a very enjoyable Sunday paddle in pretty much perfect conditions, as well as a pretty good pub lunch. I’m sure that Turner would have approved of that too.

Many thanks to Tim for suggesting and planning this trip (as well as taking extensive photos) and bringing the MCC team to enjoy the paddling along the upper Thames tideway.