A party of fully-equipped kayakers in Chiswick Mall. Note the dashed white line up the middle of the road, and the parked cars! In the background is the River Thames, a Houseboat, and Chiswick Eyot, a nature reserve in the river.
Chiswick Mall, like Strand-on-the-Green, is a low-lying riverside street here in Chiswick. At High Water on a Spring Tide, the streets regularly flood, but not always as much as this … and in 20 years, I never saw kayakers here before! So I was delighted to get this shot.
Diagram by Jhbdel on Wikimedia Commons under CC-by-SA 3.0 license
For landlubbers who’re a bit rusty on what a Spring Tide is, the tides follow the moon’s 28-and-a-half day cycle from Full Moon (opposite the sun) via half-moon (right angles to the sun) and New Moon (roughly in line with the sun, when eclipses sometimes occur). There is a high tide roughly twice a day (and a low tide twice also); every Full Moon, High Tide (High Water) is especially high, as the pulls from the moon and the sun on the oceans have maximum collaborative effect then.
The goose is swimming in the road; the camera position is the pavement which stretches away on the right, though the road junction in the middle distance is flooded. The opposite side of the road is marked by the fence which runs from image centre to upper right. This happens at high spring tides, at least when the Thames Barrier is not operated to prevent damaging flooding.
After a dull grey week, suddenly glorious sunshine for a morning’s exercise. Looking from Chiswick Mall along Corney Reach; the tip of Chiswick Eyot, a nature reserve inaccessible at high tide, is on the left.
