We've spent a week in the Pyrford area of the River Wey to date - we've been walking the area to see the sights - there is so much to see here. We're also close to where Geoge's sister Di and hubby Paul live - they both joined us the other weekend on out Tidal Thames weekend (Not as bad as we thought it would be! andA once in a lifetime thing ....).
First excursion was to walk to the Basingstoke Canal which is just a couple of miles away across country - this was our first sighting of that canal - you may just be able to see a lock under that bridge...
... were these 'men at work' - in a way yes - there was a Surrey council official escorting young offenders on a work party, today painting the balance beams on the locks. The council spends 4 months of each year doing this sort of maintenance on the Thames, the River Wey and the Basingstoke canal.
We continued to walk past the locks towards the junction of the canal with the River Wey DSCN6893.JPG
We saw lots of house boats but nothing moving at all - we were not 100% sure at what point we'd joined the canal, so I took a quick snap of all the locks so that we could work it out once back at RnR
Not sure if the lock wall is the original but it certainly looks as if this plaque is
Arrived at the junction and we turn right onto the towpath of the River Wey. Our original plan was to include the Basingstoke Canal in our spring/summer cruise but found out that we could only cruise for 6 miles - mainly through the six locks that we walked so we decided to give it a miss this time - the Basingstoke Canal Society are apparently working towards a big celebration next year and lots of money has been found to reopen the whole canal by then. Lets hope so.
We've been catching up on jobs whilst moored - here filling the water tank above ...
... the lock - as in this link (DSCN6884.JPG) the natural course of the river is partly diverted into a man-made section ...
... at Pyrfod Lock ...
... with the busy Anchor Hotel down below ...
... and the overflow of water running beside the lock ...
... the old sanitary station ... don't use the water here though ...
... it's straight from the canal!
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