On the Wey

So we got to the River Wey with great expectation on the Wednesday morning, June 3. But then we met the reality. The history is that these navigations were the first manufactured navigations in England, a century older than canals. The river was diverted with canal type sections and with locks to enable carriage from Guildford to London in 1653. The history and present story is here: http://www.weyriver.co.uk/theriver/wey_nav_1.htm. The boats designed to carry it were wide and relatively flat and over the next 350 years, the navigtations have silted up, grown weed and variously been dredged. The result for this century is a very shallow navigation indeeed. As Bella only draws two feet - there are two feet below water compared to the five or so feet above - you can imagine how shallow this is. The result for us is sluggish travel, difficult maneuvering and frustration.

Added to the shallowness is the work of the locks. We started in the Wey downstream, therefore going uphill/upstream through the locks. These lock gates were, engineering wise, a clear century before the engineering skills of the Oxford Canal and other early narrow canals. In the newer canals (we know - still 250 years old), the locks fill by water inlets deep in the floor of the lock, managed by sluices deep on the lock gate or at the side of the lock bed and operated by paddles at the top of the gate. On the Grand Union, these deep inlets are sometimes added to by gate sluices. These are grilles on the middle of the gates, the covers of which are only opened when the boats are halfway up the rising lock, as the force of water can be huge.

Well, on the Wey, there are only gate sluices and the locks are double width. So as soon as the sluices are opened any amount at all, the water rush is ruthless. The paddles have to be operated at tiny increments at a time in order not to bash the boats or to flood them. And because they are so strong, the boats need to be held by two lines, the bow and the stern. Added to that, there is no landing stage for boat crew to get off and take a line with them. This means that Pete usually let Elizabeth off on the river edge before the lock and carrying a boat hook. This she used in order to reach down and collect lines as Bella went into the locks. There was no switching and swapping crew here; Elizabeth is by far the more deft gunnel walker and there was a lot of gunnel walking to do in order to get to a good place to be dropped off for locks. And we found that all Pete's boat handling experience was critical for the force of this oddly peaceful looking river.

A beautiful day, but not a good experience. Though we had only travelled half of the length, we decided that it was not worth our pursuit. We moored in Cartbridge, near Send, and decided to turn around and go back to the Thames the next day. However, it was good to see that the National Trust uses working boats for much of the Wey upkeep; the picture captures barge and tug.

So the next morning, we set off to another stunning day to take the locks going downstream. Thes was far easier as the locks are slow emptiers and we could enter the lock at the same level as the water which allowed easy exit from Bella to lockside. It felt far more like the locks of the later canals. We were out and through Shepperton lock for a peaceful evening moored by the Thames Court Hotel/pub. Ah.