England 2024

So with our plans for Europe in 2024 completed, Julie & Pete off to enjoy more time in France, we flew from Bordeaux into London, to spend not only special time with our family living in London, but also as we usually do, explore other parts of the UK.

Our time staying with family, typically during the week, included enjoying time with the grandkids, walking them to school, picking them up when appropriate, going shopping for food most days and making dinner for everyone.

Walking the grandkids to school

It works well for their parents, as both work from home most days, and gives them a break as we get to spend time with the littlies whilst getting some exercise.

So will not spend any time describing any broader family activities except to say, we have never played so many games of Uno, Snakes & Ladders and a few others in a concentrated period in our lives and managed to go to a school fair, a new experience for us and a 5^th birthday party with lots of noisy kids!

It was great spending time with all
these lively littlies

We also caught up again with a lovely friend for lunch, who lives in London and enjoyed our time with our daughter in-law’s parents and extended family yet again!

There were a few things on our UK exploration agenda which is where this post will focus, starting with visiting a new part of London, in particular Leadenhall Market, located in what was originally the centre of Roman London.

The Thames River in London

During the 1400’s, the markets were created and quickly became a place for buying meat and fish and was built with a very grand presence.  It also became a place where foreigners in the day would meet.

The products sold in Leadenhall changed over many years but today, remains a retail location where various boutique foods and goods can be acquired within its multiple arcade style design.

The impressive ornate arcades of Leadenhall Markets, London

Whilst with the family, were all visited 17^th century house located in Richmond on the banks of the Thames River.  It is considered a rare example of a Stuart House with typically beautiful gardens and very fine exhibitions of design and artworks contained within it.

View of the 17th-century Ham House

Small part of the ornate resplendent 

The lavender gardens of Ham House

Back in 2020, when planning the European venture with Julie & Pete, it included more time together in the UK and having a go at something we had long wanted to do… doing a canal boat trip for 4 nights.  

Julie & Pete had done this before in Wales, so Pete became the nominated Captain, something that the company we hired the boat from required as part of renting it.

We also agreed we wanted to limit the number of locks to negotiate our way through, but did want to cross a viaduct and go through some sort of tunnel.  Critically important was being able to moor at night within walking distance to pubs to keep any cooking to nil.

There are over 2,000 miles or 3,200+ kms of navigable canals within the UK and we were only going to travel a mere few kms during our time on the boat.

We found a suitable place to rent the boat for 4 nights in Gailey, located near Wolverhampton, about 3 hrs north by train from where we were staying.

The actual route we took on the canal boat in red

We met Julie and Pete in Wolverhampton and were soon completing the paperwork required before boarding the boat.  Next, everyone had to undertake a 2 hr briefing on how to manage the boat, daily maintenance checks, methods for mooring overnight and safety.

We got to watch a boat going through
a lock at Gailey as part of our learnings

Part of the safety briefing included what to do if anyone fell overboard.  Part of it involved throwing a life ring to the person but for the person in the water it included these words, “don’t panic, just stand up!”.  The canals aren’t very deep apparently, but we never did find out.

Pete in the Gailey looking at our boat for 4 nights

So now to the boat which was just over 2 metres (6 foot 10 inches) wide and 13.7 metres (45 feet) long, had 2 sleeping areas, kitchen/galley and bathroom/toilet.  Typical cruising speed in open water was 4 mph (6.5 kph) but when passing other stationary moored boats, we dropped down to at least half that as moored canal boats especially can ‘rock-n-roll’ otherwise.

Kitchen and galley on the canal boat

One of the sleeping areas on the boat

By the time we left Gailey, it was mid afternoon, so we only cruised for about 2 hours before having our first crack at manoeuvring the boat to a stop at the side of the canal near our first pub, tying the boat off to stop it drifting away, having hot showers whilst the water was still warm from the motor being run and then enjoying some pub grub for dinner.

Manoeuvring our boat to moor it overnight near our first pub

The pubs we stopped at either for lunch and/or dinner during our time on the boat, typically were located right next to the canal, were all very good.

Rob on our boat after mooring overnight
with a pub in the distance

The canals themselves are quite varied, even within short distances.  Sometimes it was quite wide, other times very narrow with no ability for 2 boats to pass each other.  

Passing other boats got tricky at times

The edges of the canals could with be lined with metal making it easier to tie off to, but others were just dirt which meant we had to hammer spikes into the ground to tie ropes to.

Boats moored next to a hard on the canal

We were warned to stay away from the edges of canals lined by trees when cruising, because the water was typically shallower and it would be easy to run aground and we did touch the bottom of the canal a few times.  Yes there was a briefing on how to re-float ourselves and there were places along the canals where multi point U turns were possible.

The trees in sections of the canal made the
water look at times surreal

Steering was managed by hanging onto a pole connected to the rudder, meaning if you wanted to go left, you pushed the handle right and we quickly learned the boat took a bit of time to respond.  Another slow response time came in the form of trying to stop the boat due to its momentum.  So apart from all that it was fairly straightforward.

Pete and myself at the tiller end of the boat

There was certain rules when entering a tunnel and there was a bit to learn about making our way through locks, which we had to do a few times.

Had to do a sharp right hand turn into
new canal to line up for our 1st lock...

...but at least our first lock was easy to negotiate

It didn’t take that long to get into a nice routine with Julie and Rob staying up the front of the boat, keeping an eye out for things in the water like logs, dead animals or boats coming towards us, especially as we came up to bridges to pass under, most of which were quite narrow to get through or tree covered bends in the canal.

Passing under bridges kept us on our toes

Now in order to keep this brief, a few short eventful stories starting with locks.  Our first was quite straightforward because it was empty on arrival and the gate open on our side enabling us to pull straight into it.  

The gate shut behind us, we opened the little ‘doors’ in the lock gates to let water in, raising the water in the lock up to that on the other side of the gate we would exit, before opening that gate and departing.

Our second lock was a little different in that there was a queue of boats waiting to get through it and we could only enter when it was our turn and the water in the lock was at the same height as the side of the canal we were in.

Starting to enter our 2nd lock

Yes it is narrow

Julie and I were on lock duty and we were confronted with extra wheels to turn to open the doors to let the water in than before, and about 2 metres of water height when inside the lock was needed before we could exit on the other side.

Letting the water in to raise us in the lock

Waiting for the water to raise us

You know when you’re not doing it quite right and fast enough because people waiting to come through starting joining us at the lock gates and in typically British style, offered gentle, polite and patient advice.  

As the water is rising in our 2nd and deeper lock

Suddenly we had extra people helping
us to get through the lock faster

One of them told us they had done 18 locks the day before and were doing 20 this day… we were only doing 2 altogether.  On the way back we did MUCH better... sort of!

Our major event however occurred during our return journey towards Gailey.  By then we had a good routine going, were steering more accurately down the canal rather than ‘zig zagging’, Julie & Rob were great lookouts up front, we weren’t banging into the side of the canal as often when mooring, so we were in the groove.

Behind us we noticed a smaller black canal boat catching us, I was on the tiller (steering) and when they were close enough we beckoned them through and slowed down.  The canal at this point was just over 2 boats wide with trees on our left.

The black boat started to pass us on our left brushing the trees and we heard, “where are you from?”.  “Australia” we said and “New Zealand” they replied.  Sounds all very innocuous doesn’t it but they didn’t pass us because they wanted a chat as we ‘hurtled’ at 4 mph down the canal, side by side, I started slowing down to let them go by.

After a brief chat I asked, “ are you going to pass”? “yep” came the reply but then his wife decided she wanted more of a chat and they matched our speed whilst banging into tree branches on their side.

Then we all heard these memorable words from Rob… “boat coming!” which it was from around a tree covered bend on our left.

Passing another boat can get very tight at times

With that I threw our boat into reverse to try and slow/stop us and the NZ guy tried speeding up whilst also starting to turn towards us to avoid the boat coming straight at him.  

Everything was now happening in slow motion!

We were slowing, they were accelerating BUT the combination wasn’t quite enough as he came across in front of us and we hit them in the back right of their boat, where he was holding the tiller.

I’m sure you have seen the manoeuvre the police perform to spin a car they are chasing.  It is called a PIT manoeuvre and I had just performed my first PIT but in a 45 foot long canal boat.  Their boat spun around to be horizontally across our bow, it lifted up on its side with the guy clinging desperately onto his tiller, so much so that we could see the bottom of their boat.

In the meantime, the occupants on the boat coming towards us had eyes like saucers, especially as the black boat settled back down as we had almost stopped but they kept moving forwards and crashing bow first into the canal bank.

We did talk to the NZ couple over a few beers after we had both moored for the night next to the same pub, learning it had taken his wife a bit of time to clean everything up below decks that had flown off their benches.

One of the locations to stop either overnight or
for lunch which is what we did

We returned our boat to Gailey with the company blissfully unaware of the ‘athletics’ their boat had performed whilst cruising down the canal, and we departed on our respective trains after a most enjoyable experience overall and a few adrenalin moments to remember.

CLICK HERE for video of Geripackers canal boat

Now before describing the next part of our UK visit, we did leave the UK for 2.5 weeks to visit another country and no it wasn’t Europe and will cover that in the final post for 2024.

We did say our travels this year were a little complicated or convoluted but more on this at the end of this post.

Rob and I like to find new destinations within the UK each time we visit and this time it was the Isle of Wight, about 2.5 hrs by train, south west of London and a short ferry ride across some water called the Solent from Portsmouth.  After exiting the ferry, we chose to walk down the long jetty into the town of Ryde but we could have caught a train which comes out along its own jetty to collect passengers.

Walking along the pier towards Ryde and yes it was cool

Train coming out to collect other ferry passengers

We were staying in a small but very cosy timber cottage at the foot of our Airbnb host’s garden, which also proved very waterproof after the skies opened for a few hours of torrential rain, our hosts concerned about how we were coping.

The cosy 'Beech Hut' we stayed in on Isle of Wight

The Isle of Wight is not very big and we had elected to get around it on the double decker buses and it was a lot of fun.  It was a funny combination as we made our way between various towns on the island.  Sometimes we felt we were in a big town on the mainland but other times it was like being in the country, especially when stopping or dropping someone off.

Our visit route by double decker bus on the Isle of Wight

We would be driving down a country style road and someone would pop out from a driveway, no bus stop in sight, the bus would stop the driver and person having a chat for awhile, as if 2 old friends were seeing each other after a long break.  Chat over, the bus would continue on.

Apart from Ryde there were 2 main destinations during our time on the island, first one being ‘The Needles’ which are 3 columns of chalk on the western extremity of the island near the town of Alum Bay.  The coastal scenery around this part of the island was very nice as we hiked the paths along the hilly coastline.

Hiking along a coastal and hilly path on Isle of Wight

The famous 'Needles' of Isle of Wight

Alum Bay is also famous for the invention of radio transmission, with an Italian called Marconi setting up his radio experiments there in 1897 before successfully transmitting the first radio signal to a location 299 kms away in 1901.

The other part of the island we visited by bus was Shanklin on the south eastern area.  Here we visited a grainy yellow beach, a brisk cool breeze blowing, but the stoic poms were still out on it enjoying themselves.

Locals enjoying some time on the beach

Shanklin has an old part which we enjoyed walking through and admired its thatched roofs on the old buildings before finding somewhere for lunch in the more modern and busier section of Shanklin.

Impressive thatched roofs and buildings of older Shanklin

As we travelled by ferry back to Portsmouth across the Solent, we noticed a number of large shapes jutting out of the water.  First we thought they may have been ships waiting to enter port, but as we got a better view, they looked round so Google soon gave us an answer.

There are 4 man made forts that sit in the Solent, built to help defend England against French attack during the Napoleon era.  Construction started in 1861 and was completed around 1867.  They have since been sold and some of them now house luxury hotels… very unique.

One of the man made forts in the Solent (credit: photo found on Google)

Having returned to London and spending a little more time with our family, this complicated combination of travels throughout Europe and beyond was over and it was time to head home, Rob having been away 4 months and myself 2.5.

Our flight home was a tad different in that we decided to do a 17 hour non-stop flight from London to Perth to see what we thought of it.  To be very honest, it was surprisingly good and we would consider doing it again via Perth to either London, Paris or Rome.  From Perth there was a direct flight to Brisbane which was also good.

CLICK HERE for more photos of England 2024

Now this isn’t the final post for this year as mentioned earlier.  Whilst in London, we flew off to spend 2.5 weeks doing a bit of driving in Iceland so there will be more on that as the final post in due course, so until then, go well.