Brentford to Paddington

We spent a very pleasant long weekend in Brentford meeting up with sister in law Joy & hubby Dave & visiting Kew Gardens.

 Token Kew photo! I took loads but how many pictures of flowers do you want to see...Anyway we really enjoyed our visit &  the weather behaved itself. As we pottered we kept hearing loud music & as we wandered towards the Lion Gate to leave the music got louder then we spotted..

 these musicians on stage, it was Blondie doing sound checks getting ready for their evening concert, tickets were sold out( £36!) but we had a more pressing engagement, Mark was going to try to drag Joy into the 21st century & get her on the Internet. An hour or two later & they were online via a spare dongle of ours, Mark left it with them to play with & then they may invest in a dongle of their own although we had a text this morning to say it wasn't working....

 Leaving Brentford Visitor moorings on Tuesday morning

 Asylum Lock on the Hanwell flight,  the old asylum site over the wall is now a hospital

 The pretty Asylum Lock cottage 

The Hanwell locks weren't too arduous, they were all in our favour although we only met one boat coming down. The paddles need to be treated with respect & opened slowly as they are a bit fierce & we only needed one trip down the weed hatch. 

We found an empty spot on the Tesco moorings at Bulls Bridge, the intention was just to stop for a big shop & lunch but then we decided to stay overnight, a bit noisy but we still slept okay.

 A late start for us this morning as we leave Bulls Bridge & turn onto the Paddington Arm at 9.45am this morning.

 Not very inviting visitor moorings..

 The A40, the Westway looms overhead. Note the weed in the water, it has been quite bad, in some places the canal is greened over. When we had got moored up Mark removed a carrier bag full from the prop.

Little Venice was pretty full so after a quick stop at the services to get rid of some rubbish we carried on down to Paddington, it was busy up at the top end with the only space under a bridge so we tied up & Mark went down to the basin for a look, plenty of room further down so we moved up & are now nicely settled on a pontoon, for the next few days anyway.