It was another hot and sunny day today so rather than head up town on the train and tube we decided to stay in this area. In the morning we walked down to Teddington Lock and admired the beautiful flower beds I attempted to call our friend Carol and Brian as I could see the door to their flat was open and we were going to wave at them but they were not in. We crossed the river back towards the site of the old Teddington Studios and I gave Mum and Ian a tour around the new and very expensive apartments overlooking the weir - luckily they decided they didn't like them so will not be moving! We popped back for lunch after catching up with my friend Julia in Card Collection dropping off post cards and making sure we hit the 1 PM target time for soup and sandwich ha! ha !
After lunch we caught the bus to Richmond. I have wanted to do a longer river trip for a while and found one that goes from Richmond all the way to Hampton Court on the Turks Launches. We arrived in good time and headed to Richmond Green to enjoy a Danieli's ice cream. I went for Morello cherry flavour and Mum and Ian went for salted caramel - both were excellent! We then headed back to the river by the White Hart pub where the tide was rising fast. The boat was due at 4:15 and arrived bang on time which was just as well as the water had begun to force its way through the cobbles behind us and by the time we boarded, the tow path was flooding. The journey along the river was lovely with a slight breeze to cool us down and we had the best seats at the front of the boat out in the open. In fact it was so sunny I think I actually got slightly sunburned. When we arrived at Teddington it was literally the peak of high tide and so unusually the lock gates were both open and we sailed straight through, continuing up the river to Kingston where are we disembarked and waited a few minutes for the boat to take us on upstream to Hampton Court. Yet again we got the best seats in the house with lovely views. We had planned to walk around the gardens at Hampton Court but in the event we were actually quite tired and so after a few tourist photos we crossed the bridge and there was an R68 bus ready and waiting for us - another very good day.
