Log entry 4 of 4 · Trips
A slow weekend ring by Victoria Park, Limehouse and the Cut
Most weekend trips on a shared boat are a compromise between how far you want to go and how early someone needs to be home on Sunday. This small ring is the one we keep coming back to, because it has locks, a basin, a straight run and a park, and it fits into two days without anyone having to rush.
- First written up
- 14 June 2026
- Last amended
- 2 August 2026
- Time to read it
- Roughly 8 minutes
- Home waters
- Regent's Canal and the Lee Navigation
Stretch 1
Friday evening: getting off the mooring
The trip really starts with getting away on Friday evening, which on a rota boat means taking over from whoever had her last. Our handover is a sheet on the table: water dipped, cassette emptied or not, engine hours, anything broken. That May the previous household had left the boat in good order, with a full tank and a note saying the tiller pin was loose again. We tightened it, checked the weed hatch because the Lee had been full of cut reeds that month, and left the mooring a little after seven.
We only went as far as the stretch by Hackney Marshes. It is an hour's slow cruise, with trees on one bank and playing fields on the other, and in May the light lasts long enough to moor up before dark. There are usually spaces, and we tied up with mooring stakes because that bank has no rings. The point of the Friday leg is not distance. It is to wake up on Saturday already away from the mooring.
Dinner was the traditional first-night meal on our boat, which is whatever the last crew left in the cupboard plus something from the corner shop on the way. That time it was pasta with a tin of chickpeas and a lemon. The stove stayed cold, but it was cool enough for jumpers on the back deck until late.
Stretch 2
Saturday: the Hertford Union and the long way down
On Saturday morning we came down through the locks at Old Ford and turned into the Hertford Union, a short canal of about a mile and a quarter that climbs through three locks along the southern edge of Victoria Park. It is a quiet cut, and the park side is lined with trees that make it feel much further from the city than it is. The locks are close together, and we worked them with one person walking between them, which is the gentlest locking of the whole weekend.
At the top, where it meets the Regent's Canal, we turned towards Limehouse rather than towards Islington. That meant downhill locks all the way, which is the more relaxed direction for the steerer and the more careful one for the cill. We took them slowly, stopping for an hour at Mile End for coffee and to let a pair of boats coming up get through ahead of us. By early afternoon we were dropping down the last lock into Limehouse Basin.
The basin is a big open square of water surrounded by flats and moored boats, with the river beyond a lock we do not use. It feels nothing like the narrow cut. We found a visitor mooring, walked along the river for an hour, and came back to find a heron standing on our roof, which it continued to do for most of the evening.
Crew checklist
- Hertford Union: three locks close together, one crew walking between them
- Downhill on the Regent's towards Limehouse: watch the cill at every lock
- Read the visitor mooring notices at the basin before tying up
Stretch 3
Sunday: the Cut, straight as a ruler
The Limehouse Cut leaves the basin and runs almost dead straight for well over a mile towards the Lee near Bow. After a day of locks and bends it is a strange stretch to steer. There are no locks, few moored boats and long walls on both sides, and the temptation is to open the throttle. We did not, partly out of courtesy to the boats moored along it and partly because the Cut is one of those places where you only notice things if you are moving slowly: old warehouse walls, new flats, reeds that have taken hold in the cracks.
Where the Cut meets the Lee we turned north, towards home, past the old mill buildings and along the stretch beside the Olympic Park. The river is wider there and busier on a Sunday, with paddleboards and rowing boats, and steering becomes a matter of watching the water ahead rather than the banks. We stopped for lunch below Old Ford and took the last stretch back up through Hackney after two.
It is a short ring, and a fast crew could probably do it in one long summer day. That is not the point of it. Spread over a weekend, it gives you locks, open water, a basin and a straight run home, and it lets whoever is steering on Sunday afternoon hand the boat over tidy and on time.
Stretch 4
What the handover sheet said
Back at the mooring we filled in the handover sheet for the next household. Water down to the third notch on the dipstick, because we had filled at Limehouse but had two showers each since. Cassette emptied at the basin. Engine hours noted. The weed hatch had been opened once on the Lee on Sunday to clear a plastic bag from the propeller, which we wrote down because the next crew would want to be sure the hatch had been closed and sealed properly.
We also added two things that were not on the form. One was that the heron at Limehouse had left a mess on the roof that nobody had managed to scrub off completely. The other was that the tiller pin was loose again. It has been loose on and off for three seasons, and the log contains a long running debate about whether it needs a new pin, a new washer or simply a crew that stops fiddling with it.
It was the best two days on the boat so far that year, and the ring is on every household's list now. If there is a rule that comes out of it, it is to plan a trip by the number of hours you want to spend on the water rather than by the distance, and then to take every one of those hours slowly.