While the canal system takes you through the industrial heartland of England, past factories and terraced houses, riverside properties along the Thames are expensive, and even the boathouses, gazebos; and follies by the river are vehicles for conspicuous consumption. (Apparently the Oxford comma is still stressed out from the recent kidnapping attempt, so we are getting some help from the Keynsham semicolon.) Let’s take a look at some. Yep, that’s a boathouse with a thatched roof.

A couple of two story mock Tudor boathouses.


Another Lord of the Rings boat name.

We also saw Lord Aragorn today. That was a wide beam boat, so it must have been Aragorn in later life.

How about a conservatory cantilevered out over the river?

I’m not sure what this is, so it’s probably a folly.

Sometimes the boathouse is built in.

An eligible self-contained gentleman’s residence. Very unique; dating in part from the fourteenth century, but replete with every modern convenience. Up-to-date sanitation. Five minutes from church, post-office, and golf-links… no, wait, that was Toad Hall. I have no idea what this is, except expensive.

Of course, not all the boathouses are in pristine condition.

I suspect the owner is off in a canary yellow caravan somewhere.

Thatched roofs can also get a bit rustic if you don’t look after them.

We are moored near a zoo park about a mile from Pangbourne. It takes about an hour to get from Pangbourne to London on the train, so it is well within commuter range, and house prices reflect this. There are some lovely mansions with river views.


Unfortunately they are rather devalued by the busy major road that runs between them and the river. However, Pangbourne takes its revenge on the traffic. There are two narrow railway bridges that slow everyone down and cause traffic jams; and a toll bridge over the Thames that charges a trivial amount (equivalent to about fifty cents) to cross the river, which I’m pretty sure is just to annoy drivers. Here’s the toll bridge.

Apparently the big political issue in Pangbourne is not Brexit or immigration but reopening the public toilets…

and the car of choice is an Aston Martin

Kenneth Grahame, who wrote The Wind in the Willows, had a home in Pangbourne, but while the nearby riparian landscape is as beautiful as can be, you are not going to find Rattty here.

Water rats (actually a species of vole) were quite common when I was a kid and you would see them in streams all over the country. They are very rare now, and only found in a few places. There are several reasons for their decline, but one of the main ones is feral minks, that were released from fur farms by animal rights activists. Minks are nasty vicious predators. You may or may not think it is ok to farm them for their fur (though if you don’t like it you’d better not be wearing leather shoes as cows are much friendlier than mink) but either way it was an incredibly stupid act to release them into the wild to devastate native species.

While I was writing this, a swan that Paula had been feeding earlier came by, dragging a fishing float with about fifty feet of monofilament attached. I think it had caught a hook in its foot. While Paula distracted it with more food, I grabbed the fishing float and cut the fishing line, so at least now it is only dragging around a couple of feet of line. Hopefully, after the revolution when our new avian overlords are in control, that one will remember us and save us from the slaughterhouse.