On this floating guesthouse the captain takes care of the tricky bits - like navigating locks - leaving you to sit back and enjoy the ride
Old mother Thames ... Nell Card on the Baglady barge, with its one berth
To most, the journey from Windsor to Reading is one best made in haste. The M4 corridor - England's Silicon Valley - is not the kind of place you'd willingly idle away a romantic weekend. Unless, that is, you can book the only berth available aboard Baglady, a 55ft, skippered Dutch barge.
Baglady is the floating home of Roy and Sue and one of only three hotel boats on the river Thames. She's also the only one with no fixed itinerary - you decide where to get on, where to moor and where to get off.
Nell takes the wheel We find Baglady tethered to a weeping willow at Windsor. We're told that the wood-panelled interior was painstakingly handcrafted from old dressing tables and school desks. Our cabin, a spacious en suite with a large bed, is at the bow.
After a safety briefing, we take our tea out on deck. As we pull away from our mooring, an immaculately tanned man in a white river cruiser boasts: "You don't get cups of tea on here. Only champagne." He flashes a smile. I get on with my tea and look forward to a river cruise, Baglady-style.
Roy steers us downstream for a quick pootle around the Queen's back garden. "You get the best view of the castle from here," says Sue. "We get so close, you can sometimes see the Queen at the window in her curlers and nightie."
Roy offers me the wheel. I'm told to keep the boat to the right of the river, but I over-steer massively and zigzag across the Thames. I decide I'm better suited to watching the wake from the comfort of a sun lounger on deck.
By late morning, we've witnessed two odd scenes. At Romney lock, to the delight of the gongoozlers (lock-watchers to you and me), a woman topples face-first into the water, having attempted to make a human bridge between her boat and the lock wall. And just outside Bray I spot a crocodile on the banks with a severed limb in its jaws. It turns out to be a fibreglass gag in Rolf Harris's back garden. While enjoying a generous lunch on the rear deck we spot the unlucky lock diver wringing out her pants and reapplying her perfume. Another good reason, I think, to steer well clear of steering.
After lunch (salmon tartlets, cold meat, cheeses, salads, strawberries and wine) we stop for a saunter around Cliveden House, a luxury hotel once known for the sex-and-spies Profumo scandal. At dusk, we moor at Bourne End, a Buckinghamshire village tucked into a beech-fringed bend of the Thames. We trot up the towpath to the Bounty, a pub that can only be reached by boat or on foot. Dogs lurk under every picnic table and the jukebox plays Hendrix, Zeppelin and Dylan. Our hosts join us for local Grumpy Cow ale and I lose all sense of time and distance. I feel like we're in a far-flung, pastoral playground. In reality, we're only 21 miles upstream from Windsor.
At 9am the next day, over an impeccable fry-up, we watch a steady procession of narrow boats overtake us. "Bunch of raving insomniacs," says Roy. "They're up early to nick the best moorings. Where's the fun in that?"
Upstream, we pass Cookham Dean. "We're in Wind in the Willows territory now," says Roy, pointing out Wild Wood (Badger's home) and Hardwick House (the inspiration for Toad Hall). The setting is so bucolic, I half expect the herons, late ducklings and great crested grebes to bid us good morning as we chug along towards Henley.
Our final night is at Sonning - "the most fairy-like little nook on the whole of the river," wrote Jerome K Jerome - where Uri Geller will let you moor at the edge of his manicured lawn for a tenner. "Do you think he ever bends the rules?" asks my boyfriend Will.
That evening, we sway gently over a light supper at the Bull, a timber-framed boozer. In Jerome's day, the pub was "a veritable picture of an old country inn, with a green, square courtyard in front, where, on seats beneath the trees, the old men group of an evening to drink their ale and gossip over village politics." Sadly, the green is now a courtyard car park, but little else has changed since he and his shipmates were here.
We disembark the next morning at Reading and calculate that Baglady has been doing a docile 3mph for much of the weekend.
And as for her name? "My daughters told me the only woman I could pull in this boat would be an old baglady," Roy explains. But Baglady has everything a lackadaisical landlubber could possibly need.
• Experience days for four people from £384, weekend cruises for two people from £290pp, including breakfast and lunch (3-, 7- and 14-night cruises are also available). Season runs April-October. Contact Sue or Roy on 07758 272212, hotelboatbaglady.co.uk.
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