Going To The Dogs

We join St Pancras Cruising Club on a narrowboat convoy traversing some of east London’s little-known channels on the way to the Thames and the Isle of Dogs

On a chilly January afternoon, a small huddle of a dozen or so narrow boaters were to be seen on the lockside at Three Mills Lock, East London’s newest – and probably least-used – lock. In the gathering gloom as the daylight faded, they were being briefed prior to embarking on a ‘Caribbean Cruise’. This might seem an unlikely starting point for a journey to the West Indies (not to mention the unsuitability of their craft), but as you might be relieved (or slightly disappointed) to hear, it wasn’t actually quite such an exotic undertaking – they were in fact heading for the Isle of Dogs. Nevertheless, it was still a rather different cruise, with an interesting background…

Every January for quite some years, St Pancras Cruising Club (SPCC) used to organise a pair of annual tidal cruises for inland boaters wishing to take their craft to the London Boat Show at the ExCeL exhibition centre by the Royal Docks, and back again afterwards. Like all of SPCC’s tideway cruises it was open to all boaters, with no need to be a member of St Pancras or any other boat club. Over the years it gave many narrow boaters the opportunity to cruise the Thames tideway right down through the Woolwich Barrier and into the Docks, in company with experienced tideway boaters. But the high fees for the dock entrance lock (it wasn’t always possible to negotiate a discount) and ultimately the demise of the Boat Show led to the ending of these trips.

However, the cruises had become a popular part of the SPCC calendar, so an alternative was planned. Instead of turning left out of Bow Creek and heading down the river, the boats would turn right and follow the tidal Thames upriver for the short distance to the West India Docks on the Isle of Dogs (the loop of the river around Canary Wharf and surrounding docklands developments), now operated by the Canal & River Trust whose staff were on hand to support the cruise.