Contact Sport or Rugby?

As I said in the last blog, we started today by actually going under Albert Bridge on our way to the first lock of the day, Old Windsor Lock.

We were travelling through England's history but there was very little visible form the bank. Runnymead is still water meadows, which if course is as it should be......

The Magna Carta Temple at Runnymead

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And Magna Carta Island just blends into the rest of the bank and the Air Forces Memorial is visible from the river but so far away that it was not a good subject for a photo.

More river traffic

There started to appear more and more houseboats. A fascinating concept. This one I really liked

So much so that I took 3 photos

Ahhhh!

And another really nice car

Penton Hook Lock

And then an incident occurred at Penton Hook Lock which really shook me.

All along the Thames my big dread was to collide with one of these expensive white cruisers and so I always gave them a wide berth

Approaching the lock, the layby and bollards were on the left and a number of boats were locking out, one of which was one of these white boats with 2 small children and their father on the front of the boat.

I was positioned to the left to give way to the boats when suddenly this white boat makes a significant change in direction and heads directly for my boat. Expecting the person at the helm to correct this I maintained my heading, any change could well have resulted in collision. The man at the front was looking at me but not reacting so I realised that their course was not going to change as he seemed unaware of the problem. By this time the only course of action I could take was to stop, to reduce the impact. If I steered to avoid her she would hit me broadside. I didn't like that option as they had started by now to increase speed. So I managed to stop just before a direct head-on collision. 

But strangely enough when I looked at the reaction from the occupants, I couldn't actually see anyone at the helm and the man at the front didn't do anything either. They did not turn around to exchange details so I assumed there was no damage

The lock keeper was astonished, all he heard was the terrific bang. I was left with some white paint on my bow otherwise undamaged and couldn't really see much damage on the other boat. So shaken we continued and moored up soon after for the night just beyond Chertsey. After a long post mortem of the incident and a couple of glasses, we came to the conclusion that whoever was at the helm did not actually know I was there!

The next day I reported the incident to the Environment Agency