Navigable, Lechlade
I like the word –
meaning Lechlade and boats,
Lechlade and barges,
Lechlade and skiffs
and slipways users,
cruisers and canoes,
rowing sculls and swan pedalos,
wilderness trail boats
and longer wide beams.
Busy Lechlade with tackle and chat,
charging points and chandlery.
A poet once rowed from Windsor
to Lechlade,
loved it so much
he vowed to row
all the waterways of England,
settled instead for
‘three mutton chops, well peppered’
and Lechlade.
LECHLADE
Lechlade is the first place on the Thames where the river is navigable by boat, so all manner of them begin to appear. The poet Percy Bysshe Shelley famously rowed from London to Lechlade…
Lechlade gets its name from the River Leach which joins the Thames just east of the town. Access to the river Thames is gained by crossing the Halfpenny Bridge, to the south bank of the river and joining the Thames Path, or by using the Seven Stiles walk to the west of town through pastureland to the Round House.