1st September 2019
After visiting Gunnersbury Park I walked down to Kew Bridge and bought a picnic lunch, sat and ate it by the river at Strand-on-the-Green, which would be a much nicer spot if the litter bins were ever emptied and the piles of broken glass bottles removed. I suspect this isn't a place you'd want to hang around at night.
As it was still a fine afternoon I decided to walk along the north bank of the Thames, following the Thames Path towards Brentford to see how far I'd get.
This section of the Thames Path mostly follows the riverbank, between the many and varied moored houseboats and new blocks of riverside apartments.
Some of the houseboats are quite ramshackle though no doubt these permanent moorings are not inexpensive. Some, particularly those nearer Kew Bridge, have high fences on the landward side with gates and letterboxes, so the path runs through an alleyway.
Further along the moorings are more open and there are a variety of types of boat - mostly converted from commercial cargo barges. There are other tyoes of craft moored here too.
At Waterman's Park, a narrow strip of green space between the river and the A315 is the sad sight of the wreck of the 1910 Harbour tug Deepwater.
Until 2016 this was lived in as a houseboat until it and two other boats were taken into the possession of the local authority as having been abandoned by their owner. Shortly afterwards the Deepwater was damaged, allegedly by council workers, and began to sink. In spite of efforts by other local boat owners to refloat her she is now a sunken wreck. The council and local boat owners were involved in a long dispute over plans to evict the existing boats and build a multi-million pound marina, so you can draw your own conclusions as to why Deepwater was allowed to sink.
Since then the council have got their way and the few boats and wrecks remaining are fenced off from the land, the former riverside community has been evicted, and the gentrification of this stretch of Thames riverside is set to go ahead.
No doubt the council's plans will cost a multiple of their projected costs and take many years of disruption before they are finally completed, after which another part of London's riverside will have been reduced to bland, sanitised conformity.
Further along the path diverts away from the river to the High Street and then back again to the river opposite John's Boat Works on Lot's Ait where there are many barges moored and being worked on.
This part of the walk at least has a bit more character and becomes a bit more "industrial". Then as we come to the mouth of the River Brent, from which Brentford takes its name, there are a number of moorings at Point Wharf Lane alongside blocks of new apartments.
At Brentford Dock the path again turns away from the river in front of MSO Marine's large boatyard and heads back to Brentford High Street.
Time was getting on so I turned left and walked up the High Street to find a bus (alas not the Routemaster that was running as part of Brentford Festival) to get me back to Osterley where I'd left the car.
Brentford High Street was until the building of the Great West Road in the 1920s the main road to the west from London and still contains a number of historic buildings, including quite a few former coaching inns.
Crossing over the River Brent again via the bridge in the High Street I was reminded that on a childhood walk with my Grandad he'd pointed out the area on the left bank looking downstream where he aid my Gran had been born, though even then the area had been redeveloped so the house no longer existed and since then it has been much altered again.
After that little reminder of family ties to this area I crossed the road and caught a bus to Boston Manor Station and then a tube to Osterley.
No comments:
Post a Comment