... and Millie makes three

We didn’t wake up until nearly 9am – I told you we were exhausted last night!! We went down through Shepperton Lock and did a sharp right hand turn up into the Wey and Arun Navigation. You go through a lock gate, into a pound, tie up and let the Lock Keeper know you are there. The Wey and Arun’s locks are older than those on the Thames and they had to build an extra gate to ensure there is sufficient water to get in and out of the lock. An Act of Parliament was obtained in 1651 to make the River Wey navigable from Guildford down to its confluence with the Thames at the Thames’s most southerly point between Shepperton and Weybridge. The work was completed in 1653. The first part of the canal is through Weybridge and there were some lovely houses backing onto to it. With the sun getting lower now it was lovely shining through the trees. The locks on the canal operate differently to what we are used to. We have a different windlass to start with and you must use both gates – we don’t do that on normal broad canals. You also leave the lock gates open behind you – that seems very strange! We past the ruins of Newark Abbey which was established in the late 12th Century by Rauld de Calva and his wife Beatrice de Saudes for Augustian canons. During King Henry VIII's dissolution of the monasteries Newark Priory was dissolved. The last known prior of Newark Priory was Richard Lipscombe, appointed just before the surrender of the house in 1538. The building falling into ruin, was said to have been further destroyed by locals using the stones for road mending; until Lord Onslow, the owner in the 1730s, decided to preserve what remained. We moored up for the night just below Newark Lock.