Touchstone returns to Hermitage, fresh from drydock. Gates open 11am to 4pm on both Saturday and Sunday Motor tug Touchstone will be coming and will to be open to visitors, there will be a pop-up cafe in the pier house and of course the resident live-aboard boats to view close up, mainly Dutch and English river barges, with one [...]
Hermitage welcomes the historic vessel Havengore for the September open days weekend, in the year of the Queen's Platinum Jubilee. It will be open to visitors during the normal open day hours of 11am to 4pm. Havengore was specially commissioned by the Port of London Authority in 1954 to act both as its flagship and principal [...]
After more than three years tug Touchstone returns to Hermitage Gates open 11am to 4pm on both Saturday and Sunday Motor tug Touchstone will be arriving from Chatham Historic Dockyard to be open to visitors, there will be a pop-up cafe in the pier house and of course the resident live-aboard boats to view close up, mainly Dutch and [...]
The first open weekend of 2022 has sailing barge "Will" here, fresh from dry dock, winter repairs and maintenance. The vessel is available for visitors to look at close up, as well as tour round the deck (with care). She is a working charter barge, taking groups of people on private charters now, rather than [...]
Two years on from our last Open Days, the 2021 ones coincide with Open House. No need to book, but there may be limitations on numbers and the pop-up cafe that is usually in place in the pier house will be operating but in a more distanced mode. The pier house is of course well [...]
The Cirdan Trust vessel Faramir came to Hermitage at the end of July; they report below on the trip: Cirdan, is a small charity that has been providing life changing experiences to the disadvantaged aboard its sailing fleet for nearly 40 years. Obviously, the restrictions put in place with the pandemic put a halt to [...]
Photo above: plastic sampling on the river between Richmond and Twickenham. The Living River Foundation is returning to the Thames to sample the estuary for microplastics floating in the surface of the water. The last time this was sampled was 2018 when they found fibres from sanitary items and broken shards of old plastic items. [...]
Following on from the contribution to the successful activities of the Activity Centre in 2017 & 2018 Hermitage River Projects contributed another grant to support the programme at the centre in Shadwell, located just a mile downstream from Hermitage. The aim is to deliver a summer programme of Outdoor and Adventure Sports to young people [...]
Back on the 29th Feb, a troop of Scout leaders and young adults who form the Kent Scout Powerboating group braved the wet and windy weather to come up the river in their RIBS, stopping for a couple of hours at Hermitage visitor berths before heading back down the river.
Before we launch into the 2020 season of Open Days and visiting historic boats we look back on a particularly special barge visiting from The Netherlands in 2019 Korneliske Ykes II, a replica wooden eel sailing barge built about ten years ago, sailed over to London in June of 2019 with a [...]
