Why Ninja Turtles are taking over the Thames

FoR any Londoner, the words Circle Line mean the yellow line on the Tube map, a continuous loop around Central London.

But sailing journalist Steffan meyric Hughes realised it was possible to construct another route round the capital, on water, and set out on one of those entirely pointless but interesting journeys so beloved by those with an exploring nature.

His aim was to be the first person to circumnavigate London in a small boat using the city’s network of rivers and 200-year-old canals — a trip of some 71 miles, 29 locks, 185 bridges, two tunnels, two aqueducts and the Thames tidal barrier.

His craft was a Storm 15 sailing dinghy, 15ft long, weighing only 80kg. Along canals where the bridges are too low for a mast, it had to be rowed, with an engine as back-up. Too small to sleep in, Hughes’s plan was to camp alongside it wherever he could.

His route starts at the Thames Sailing Club in Surbiton, Britain’s oldest river sailing club, then winds east along the Thames, through the Grand Union Canal system at Brentford and ends 31 miles later at Limehouse Basin in East London.

The Thames is tidal as far as Teddington Lock and Hughes needs to make Brentford before the tide turns against him. But his engine won’t start and he’s forced to row like mad to make it in time. once there, he finds nowhere to camp and has to Tube it back to his north London flat to sleep.

He spends a tortuous day negotiating the Hanwell Flight, a series of locks that raise the water level 53ft in half a mile, before he can take in the fascinating life along the waterway.

The canal by Southall, where 55 per cent of the population originates from the indian sub-continent, is nicknamed the Ganges and turns out to be full of floating coconuts.

it’s used as a local version of the actual Ganges for Hindu death rites, coconuts being part of the postcremation ritual.

The water is also home to red- eared turtles, bought as pets for children during the Teenage mutant ninja Turtle craze in the nineties. The craze passed and people released them into the canals. They grow as big as dinner plates and terrorise native wildlife including frogs and birds, and even attack ducks.

The canal system itself offers surprises, as when Hughes crosses high over London’s busy north Circular road, whose drivers are unaware that the structure above them is an aqueduct carrying boats hidden behind its high sides.

Then Hughes negotiates the 200-year-old islington tunnel under the streets of north London, three quarters of a mile in Stygian darkness.

it’s with some relief that he rejoins the Thames in East London and sails through the Thames Barrier, and along the open river through London back to his starting point.

What’s best in Hughes’s account are his whimsically philosophical musings on his various sailing experiences, although another side of the same coin is the book’s weakness — lack of hard factual detail when more would have added to our enjoyment.

There are 1,100 known wrecked boats at the bottom of the Thames and its estuary