Kayaking the WHOLE River Thames, Source to London Barrier
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- Опубликовано: 7 июл 2024
- / _nickcowley
Kayaking (with a bit of cycling) the entire length of The River Thames, from its source in Kemble to the Thames Barrier in London. With music, no Vlog. August/September 2022.
On a sunny summers day in the pub an idea popped up between a friend and I, “would’t it be cool to travel the whole length of the Thames”. Well, a couple of months later with something that looked like a plan and armed with a few auction purchases we did just that.
The first section we cycled and walked following the Thames Path trail until there was enough water to get in with our Kayaks. The journey took 10.5 days covering 185 miles. We camped along the way and had a couple of nights staying with friends and family at the London end (nowhere to camp!).
All Environment Agency and Port of London Authority guidance followed.
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🛶
00:00 - Intro
00:27 - Day 1: Kemble -- Letchlade (Cycled Kemble to Cricklade 16 miles) 8 miles kayak
02:34 - Day 2: Letchlade -- Newbridge - 17 miles
04:37 - Day 3: Newbridge -- Sandford Lock - 18 miles
07:41 - Day 4: Sandford Lock -- Dorchester - 15 miles
10:00 - Day 5: Dorchester -- Pangbourne - 16 miles
10:37 - Day 6: Pangbourne -- Henley - 18 miles
15:00 - Day 7: Henley -- Cliveden - 14 miles
16:40 - Day 8: Cliveden -- Staines - 19 miles
17:14 - Day 9: Staines -- Molsey - 11 miles
18:00 - Day 10: Molsey -- Putney - 16 miles
19:06 - Day 11: Putney -- Thames Barrier - 18 miles
🎬 Filmed using:
GoPo Hero 4 and Hero 7
Additional footage from iphone
🎵Music:
Vinyl Memories by SynergyMusicUA
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#kayaking #riverthames #gopaddling
If you're planning on doing a similar trip or just enjoyed the journey feel free to leave a comment or question below. Thanks for watching.
Where abouts does the river become navigable by kayaks , and would you recommend any good launch point’s ?
It can depend on water levels, Cricklade is probably the first area where it becomes navigable, when we did it this wasn't possible. Lechlade you're pretty much guaranteed. We launched from The Red lion Castle Eaton, they charged a small launch fee, although I have a feeling they were going to stop allowing people doing this. 'Paddle points' is an excellent website to check out.
I'm the 100th Subscriber!!! The video was fantastic.
Thank you for the support!
So good! Well done lads!
Nice adventure that
Superb video man, I've walked it and documented it this year, but it was nice to see it from a different perspective. Cheers
Thank you, glad you enjoyed. I'll be sure to check out your perspective and see what we missed!
about 2 years ago which i really enjoyed i did a canoe (inflatable) trip from Stains to Henley the some weeks later i did it from Oxford to Reading next week i will do Kemble to Oxford if it doesn't take too long... i'm thinking 3-4 days ? Nice Video guys 👍
Those are both really nice sections of the river you did! Kemble to Oxford, yeah i'd say 3-4 days. If you look in the description we listed our mileage, we took 3 days to do Kemble to Sandford lock, which is just past Oxford. The upper Thames is great, enjoy!
Did you not notice the grey smelly water you were paddling through????
Did you have to do much planning for the journey? Or was a lot of it made up as you went, did the plan change much if there was one?
We did put a lot of planning in, particularly as we were both novice kayakers, so we were a little unsure what to expect. We had rough mileage and areas we wanted to get to each day, wild camping along the route. We pre booked into one campsite roughly half way anticipating we may be in need of a shower, which was definitely a moral booster! The London end probably had the most planning as there isn't really anywhere to camp downstream of Chertsey, for those nights fortunately we had some friends and family we could stay with, we left some inflatable roof racks with them before setting off so we could transport the boats. In London there was the tide times to consider, we had to make sure that we caught the outgoing tide from Putney. Also we had pre planned where we would get out at that end (Greenwich Yacht Club), there really isn't anywhere to stop and get out of the river downstream from Putney.
Having said all this, the plan wasn't rigid and we weren't concerned about completely sticking to it, apart from the London end. There were a few days where we did less mileage and others where we did more. We were restricted to doing it in 12 days, so the hardest part was not stopping at every pub on the river!
Hi Nick. My brother and I are thinking of canoeing the Thames (source to Teddingtom lock) with are 14 year old sons this summer. How many hours a day did you paddle for, what sort of distances, and do you think younger people could manage? We will camp along the way and are estimating 8 days in total..... Dan
Hi Dan. I’ve added the miles for each day in the description. 19 miles was our longest and 11 miles was our shortest. We roughly had an average moving speed of 3 mph for the non tidal part. We did around 9 to 12 hours a day but that is including breaks and getting around/through the locks - these really do slow you down, even carrying around some locks could take nearly 15 mins. I’d recommend getting up and on the water early, that helps with chipping away at the milage.
The kids, its hard to tell really, there is quite an accumulation on the body, and it takes a while to loosen up in the mornings, but then again they may be better off in that regard. Generally I would say its more of a resilience thing as opposed to fitness. The beauty of the Thames is it’s so accessible, so even if you do have to cut the trip short there’s plenty of options. Good luck!
did they just dump the bikes at the start?
We preloaded a car up with the kayaks, and then were met at the launch point, bikes went into the car