On the Wey to Guildford

After a quiet night in New Haw (albeit with the background sound of the M25 which was about half a mile away), we set off upstream, towards Guildford. The locks on the Wey have their sluice gates within the lock gates themselves, rather than the more usual arrangement where the sluices are built into the sides of the locks. When filling an empty lock, the result is that the water gushes into the lock well above water level, creating masses of turbulence, and leaving you with the task of trying to stop your boat drifting into the torrent of water! All of this means that you have to secure your boat with ropes at both ends and then hang on tightly!

A pretty stretch of river

We stopped at Pyrford marina to get a new propane tank and refuel. We had to wait a while because everyone was at lunch, and then descovered that they didn't have the appropriate sized gas canister. They did however have fuel, and we filled the tank to the brim again. This boat is surprisingly economical, and we have spent approximately £8 per day for 6 or 7 hours cruising and all the power and hot water we need for the day.

A family of cute ducks

There are a couple of flood locks on the Wey - normally left open at both ends and closed when the river goes into flood to help control water levels.

Leaving Walsham flood lock



The river opens out after a while into wide water meadows stretching into the distance. On a couple of occasions, we came to a fork in the river with no clue about which fork to take. We were right 50% of the time! After taking the wrong turn, we had to reverse back onto the river before taking the right fork - a sign would be really useful! We passed some beautiful houses with fabulous gardens stretching down to the river.

Nice river frontage

Cute horses with cuter foals

We moored up fairly early this afternoon, deciding to take advantage of a lovely stretch of grassy bank and some sunshine.

Dogs waiting to explore grassy bank

 We sat on the bank and enjoyed watching a large hairly black dog leaping into the river, finding big sticks and then swimming back across the river. He kept this up for a quite a while bringing back several log size sticks!

Log gathering!