The Wey Navigation, Surrey

Living just 10 minutes walk from the River Wey Navigation means that it’s somewhere that I enjoy visiting on a regular basis, particularly to take photographs - there are so many different aspects to it, each of which looks different according to the time of the year.

Together with the Godalming Navigation, it provides a 20-mile (32 km) continuous navigable route from the River Thames near Weybridge via Guildford to Godalming, connecting to the Basingstoke Canal at West Byfleet and the Wey and Arun Canal near Shalford. The Navigations consist of both man-made canal cuts and dredged & straightened parts of the River Wey.

The river was one of the first in England to be made navigable, opening in 1653, with 12 locks between Weybridge and Guildford, the Godalming Navigation, with a further four locks, was completed in 1764. They continued to be used for commercial traffic right up until 1983.

The two Navigations were donated to the National Trust in 1964 and 1968 respectively.