Visitors to the White Cross pub in Richmond were left no option but to arrive by boat yesterday as the River Thames broke its banks. The cosy riverside establishment in Surrey has a special high-tide entrance in case of flooding but even this was inaccessible on foot. The much-loved pub regularly gets cut off, usually about five times a month, but yesterday’s was a very high tide. The occurrence is a welcome excuse for the regulars who relish more time in the pub away from DIY jobs at home but it’s perhaps not so favoured by stranded office workers seeking to get back to work after a boozy lunch. The Travel PR team is planning an after-work drink when the waters have subsided!
The Thames is known often to flood at high tide near Richmond Bridge, but visitors – and their cars – are often caught out. Local businesses are prepared for high water levels via reference to tide timetable books. The tide rises and falls due to the rotation of the earth and gravitational pull of the moon. Exceptionally high and low tides – Spring Tides – occur at the time of the new moon (or the full moon) when the sun, moon, and earth are approximately aligned.
Camilla Colley
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Waiting for the dust to settle
Tuesday, April 20th, 2010As passenger chaos continues, the Travel PR team is trying to stay upbeat about the ‘Eyjafjallajoekull effect’. From a purely selfish perspective, we’ve enjoyed the peace and quiet that a break from being in the Heathrow flight path affords. And, while two of our esteemed colleagues were denied their respective holidays last weekend – one to Marrakech, the other to Slovakia – both agree that a spell of unseasonably sunny weather at home, which continues today, did (kind of) make up for the disappointment.
As for the rest of us? Well, we’ve spent the last few days surrounded by almost deafening decibels of birdsong, and basked in superb spring temperatures: new dad, Rob, spent the weekend introducing his newborn son to the quiet delights of the English countryside and Sarah soaked up the sun in nearby Kew Gardens…while I narrowly avoided ‘lobster legs’ by covering up just in time during a rosé-drenched lunch on the riverbank at Richmond.
Like everyone else, we hope the UK travel industry is soon back in business and appreciate how hard our tour operator clients are working to repatriate and rearrange plans for holidaymakers due to depart during this difficult time. But we hope, amid all the madness of the last few days, that everyone’s found at least something to marvel at as nature once again shows us who’s really running the country. Karen Carpenter
Tags: Eyjafjallajoekull, flight path, Heathrow, Iceland volcano, Kew Gardens, Richmond, travel, travel chaos, travel pr, UK travel industry
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