Laleham (River Thames) – Tuesday 14th July

You may remember that I said yesterday that Muffin hadn’t been eating so Richard gave him the new food this morning and he wolfed it down!!  Now what on earth do I do with 12 kilos of food he doesn’t like!

Up through Shepperton Lock and a chance to empty what needed emptying!  Along to Chertsey Lock to fill with water – it took so long I reckon we must have been down to the last couple of inches!  I keep asking Richard if he can put a water gauge in but it’s a job that never gets done.

We stopped for lunch at Laleham where there are some proper moorings – not brilliant but perfectly adequate.  After a pow wow we decided to stay the night.  We went for a nice walk along the Thames Path to Penton Hook Lock passing the Queen Mary Reservoir Raw Water Intake.  Thames Water abstracts from several intakes (including Datchet, Laleham, Walton and Hampton) under its licence from the Environment Agency which allows 1818 million litres per day on average over the year.  The Queen Mary Reservoir was once the largest reservoir in the world and supplies western London and Surrey.  It was completed in December 1924 and opened officially by King George V in June 1925.

The grass is very parched in this part of the world – it wasn’t like this when we left home 10 days ago.  However we passed a lovely flower bed outside a house which must be watered every day.

In the evening we went to the Three Horseshoes in Laleham.  Richard had been up earlier to inspect it and found that we could take Muffin into the garden and that there were Morris Men dancing this evening.  We ordered our food but it started to drizzle – everyone else went inside but we had to decamp to the smoking gazebo!  We had a lovely meal and then sat and watched the Thames Valley Morris Men who hail from Claygate!  In my mind Claygate is nowhere near the Thames Valley!!  TVMM have been dancing in Claygate, Surrey and further afield continuously since 1952 and continue to perform each year at the Claygate Flower Show. They also dance around all the pubs in Claygate on Boxing Day.

3.13 miles

2 locks