Cruising the Paddington Arm

We moved off our Bull's Bridge mooring and turned on to the Paddington Arm around 10am. No hurry today, we had booked a mooring at Rembrandt Gardens in Little Venice, arrival time was after 2pm. It was a beautiful sunny day, a perfect day for our four hour cruise ahead. For those who don't know where Rembrandt Gardens is, try this link.

There was plenty of artwork along the way to keep us interested, this one made from junk pulled from the canal.

There seemed to be a breakout of something on the canal, I am guessing it was blue/green algae if I had to guess. It was everywhere!

Visually, the water was pretty clear, there were plenty of birds and other wildlife around, even getting deep into the suburbs.

The first two and half hours there was no shortage of moorings available. After that the cruising slowed considerably with moored boats increasing significantly. This was one boat, if that is the right word, that caught my eye. There was a door on the canal side, must have been less than an inch off the water. I did take a shot of the door but it wasn't in focus.

As we got closer to Paddington Basin, around an hour out, you would be very lucky to get a mooring...ever! Even the boats on the four hour moorings in front of Sainsbury's looked like they had been there for months. Just before we moored, we received a call from the manager of the moorings giving us a few instructions on where we needed to go. We moored up behind a broad beam hotel boat. I didn't know at the time, but after meeting the boater that was waiting for his booked mooring to become available, the owner of the broad beam hotel boat decided that he needed to stay on for extra days to pick up his clients. Seems that even that the CRT moorings at Rembrandt Gardens aren't immune from over-stayers.

Two days later, when the owner of the broad beam returned I mentioned to him that he was in somebody else's mooring, his reply 'in my mind I thought I had booked until Sunday,' and me, 'so you know someone is waiting for the mooring but you stayed anyway? He walked away, I guess the conversation became too difficult for him! We were lucky enough to get our mooring in Little Venice as booked. I am unsure if there will be any repercussions for the wide beam owner but I must say that Sarah from www.bespokeboatingsolutions.com, who manages the Rembrandt Gardens moorings, does I good job of keeping you in the loop. Being able to pre-book a mooring in the centre of London is a great initiative by CRT, we saw first hand how difficult it is to get a seven day mooring in the Paddington Basin.

Not long after we tied up, a highly polished Maid of the Locks turned up off the Regent Canal looking for their pre-booked mooring, I helped them breast up to Serafina while they went for a walk to find their mooring. A half an hour later they were back and set off again a little further down the Paddington Arm.

We are only five minutes walk from Paddington Underground Station, our mooring is for four days.  In that time Rachael and I have quite a shopping/sightseeing list to get through considering this is the second time we have been in London in four months.