Mr Piper picks a peck of pretty Pipers; living it up at the Leander; beer with buddies at the Boater’s Bar
It just so happened that Roy and I found ourselves in the south of England on the weekend of the annual Piper Boats get-together at Henley-on-Thames.
Here’s where it all becomes serious: our cross-Channel pilot, David Piper (the founder of Piper Boats), met us at Sunbury Lock, three locks downriver from Penton Hook.
He was jumping ship from another Piper boat, Otium, coming upstream from Richmond. Another couple of locks took us to the long layby for Teddington Lock, where the Thames becomes tidal, and we moored for the night.
On our first day out from T&K Marina, passing through Sonning, Shiplake, Marsh, Hambleden, Hurley, Temple and Marlow locks, we were extremely pleased to find a mooring near Cookham Bridge, exactly where we enjoyed spending several days last summer.
As an expat you get used to saying goodbye to friends, knowing it’s not goodbye but au revoir. Still, as we head off downriver tomorrow for London, the English Channel and Calais, who knows when we’ll see our marina friends again?
And where will our supply of gammon and lamb roasts come from when we’re no longer here to win them at the Boaters Bar’s weekly meat raffle?
Only a few days to go before Roy and I say goodbye to the Thames & Kennet Marina and head downriver on our Dutch barge Karanja – all the way downriver to London – before embarking on the Channel crossing to Calais.
We’ve been through Thames locks Sonning, Shiplake, Marsh, Hambleden, Hurley, Temple, Marlow and Cookham. Now we’ll spend a few leisurely days going through Boulters, Bray, Boveny, Romney, Old Windsor, Bell Weir, Penton Hook, Chertsey, Shepperton, Sunbury and Molesey – before picking up our experienced pilot, David Piper, at Teddington. That’s where the non-tidal Thames becomes tidal and a tad less tame.
How would you fancy owning a 135-year-old houseboat, as SHEILA FINNEY has done for nearly the past two decades? Lovely old Tedders being permanently moored just three or four berths down from our Dutch barge Karanja at the Thames & Kennet Marina, she and her husband Doug kindly invited me over for tea and a chat.
So much for fellow Piper-boat owners. Here are the stories behind the naming of a few other boats we know.
According to Claire Jensen (from Happy Chance), cruisers* often have “sort of baby boomer names that are often about money – names like Grin and Tonic, No Riff Raff, Oy Oy Saveloy, 50 Shades of Bray or Pimms O’Clock – especially the gin-palacey ones.”
*Cruisers are those white fibre-glass boats, sometimes less-than-affectionately dubbed “yoghurt pots” by those who prefer something with a steel hull that’s a bit more solid (and perhaps more stolid, too).
If you were to get a boat, what would you call it – and why? Naming a boat is a very personal thing, and it can be quite revealing. In celebration of being back on our Dutch barge, Karanja, for the next five months, here’s what other Piper Dutch barge owners told me last summer.
Back again at Henley for the annual Piper rally – our last expedition on Karanja before closing her up for the winter and heading south (like migratory geese) – we moored up opposite picturesque Temple Island, at the end of a row of 11 Piper Dutch barges.
The idea of this annual UK event – another rally is held in France, at Saint Jean de Losne – is for prospective clients to come along, see examples of the finished product, traipse around them and talk to their happy owners about their experiences.
Life on a boat is not all champagne and roses. When your lovely new bath won’t empty – and neither will the basins, nor the kitchen sink – it can only be one thing: a problem with the grey-water tank.
