Walk the Thames Path east and the towpath changes bank at Shepperton Lock. Either a boat takes you across, or you go north to Walton Bridge and come back down the other side. The ferry is the short answer, and it has been the short answer, on and off, since the 1860s.
Operating times as published by the operator and read on 22 September 2026. The page carries no validity date of its own; the site's sitemap records its last edit as 23 March 2026. The Ferry Point — Shepperton–Weybridge pedestrian ferry, operating times · 2026-09-22
The alternative is a road walk. National Trails puts it plainly in its Thames Path description: at Shepperton Lock the route forks according to whether the boat is running, and if it is not, you head north and cross at Walton Bridge instead. That is the comparison this crossing exists to win — a few minutes of open boat against a diversion on tarmac, at the one point where the towpath changes bank and the mouth of the River Wey cuts off the direct line. It is the argument behind most of our English river and estuary crossings.
The service is branded the Nauticalia Ferry and runs from The Ferry Point on Ferry Lane, Shepperton, on the Spelthorne side of the river. Worth knowing if you are searching for it: nauticalia.com no longer carries anything about the boat at all — it is now a gift shop online, with no ferry page — and the timetable and price list have moved to theferrypoint.com, which credits Nauticalia Ltd as managing the site. Companies House puts both companies at the same address on Ferry Lane.
In practice it is a quarter-hourly shuttle rather than a timetabled service: nine in the morning until half past five, every day from March to October, weekends only from November to February. From the Weybridge bank you ring a bell. Everything is conditional on the river, and there is no status page to consult before you set off.
Two adults and a child, over and back, is £15.00 — which is precisely what the family return costs, so on that particular combination the family ticket buys you nothing. It earns its keep with a second child, since children are £3.00 return each and the family price does not move.
One line in the table behaves oddly and is reproduced here exactly as the operator prints it: a single with a bicycle costs £5.00, a pound and a half more than a single on foot, but a return with a bicycle is £6.00 — the same as a return on foot. Take the bike over and back and the supplement disappears.
| Single | £ 3.50 |
| Return | £ 6 |
| Single with a bicycle | £ 5 |
| Return with a bicycle | £ 6 |
| Weekly | £ 20 |
| Single | £ 1.75 |
| Return | £ 3 |
| Single with a bicycle | £ 2.50 |
| Return with a bicycle | £ 3 |
| Weekly | £ 10 |
| Under 5 | Free |
| Family return | £ 15 |
Price list headed 'from 1 April 2025', with no end date, still showing that date when read on 22 September 2026 The Ferry Point — ferry price list · 2026-09-22
The crossing sits where the River Wey empties into the Thames, immediately below Shepperton Lock. That junction is the whole reason for the boat: the Thames towpath swaps from the north bank to the south here, and the mouth of the Wey blocks anyone trying to walk round it. Neither the operator nor the navigation authority publishes a crossing time or a width for the river at this point, so this page does not state one — and the two pins on the map are postcode centroids, the closest official positions available for either landing.
Ferry Lane runs down to the water and ends at a boatyard site the operator places a hundred yards from Shepperton Lock, where the Wey joins the Thames. What is there now is Nauticalia's head office, the Ferry Coffee Shop and a courtyard of small businesses. The chandlery that used to be part of the draw has gone — the company says its only shop is now in Portsmouth, and walking guides still promising one are out of date.
Parking is the weak point. Surrey County Council's own survey of the lane records single yellow lines along almost all of it, barring parking from 08:00 to 20:00 Monday to Saturday between May and October, on a road narrowing to about 3.5 metres and mostly unlit. That survey dates from 2016, so treat the hours as indicative.
Nobody publishes an address for the south landing. There is no quay with a postcode, just steps up from the water with a bell at the bottom of them and a path beside the mouth of the Wey into Thames Street. The pin on the map is the nearest postcode centroid on the Elmbridge bank, not a surveyed landing point, and it is the best any official source allows.
This end also decides whether the crossing works for you: National Trails notes that a wheelchair can go aboard but would have to be lifted up the steps, and Surrey County Council's walks page calls the ferry not easily accessible. Elmbridge's seven Weybridge car parks are all up in the town, none on the riverside.
Coming from the south you ring on the quarter hour, from the bottom of the quayside steps, so the ferryman knows to come over. The operator mentions no equivalent signal on the Shepperton bank, where you are already standing next to the office and the coffee shop.
Payment by card is taken on board or in the Ferry Coffee Shop beside the landing. Cash is not mentioned either way on any published source, and there is no online booking to fall back on.
The daily service runs March to October. For four months of the year the boat works Saturdays and Sundays and nothing else — which matters most to Thames Path walkers, because the winter alternative is the road. It is still more than the Bantham ferry offers, which shuts completely once October arrives.
Everything the operator publishes is qualified by weather and river conditions, and this reach does flood. The Environment Agency publishes stream warnings for Chertsey to Shepperton and Shepperton to Sunbury; on 21 September 2026 both read clear, but the ferry itself has no live status feed. The Appledore ferry in Devon at least runs a status panel; here there is nothing to refresh.
National Trails says a wheelchair can go aboard but would have to be lifted up the steps on the Weybridge side, and Surrey County Council describes the ferry as not easily accessible. The Shepperton approach along Ferry Lane is level; the far bank is not.
Spelthorne Borough Council still points readers at an operator web address that no longer resolves, and describes the service as March to October only, missing the winter weekends. Its page was last modified in September 2025. The operator's own page is the one to read.
The ferry's location is an accident of nineteenth-century argument. The operator's own account has William Hatch, appointed first keeper when the City of London opened Shepperton Lock in 1813, starting to take the barge horses across because the towpath changes bank here — and being told to stop after the Church Square ferryman complained of lost income. A compromise let him carry horses but not passengers. Complaints resurfaced in 1861, and in 1863 a petition succeeded in moving the Shepperton ferry down to the lock; the parish road was made up and became Ferry Lane.
The lock beside it is the older institution. Spelthorne Borough Council records a timber pound lock going in here in 1813, put there by the City of London Corporation because craft were grounding in the shallows; it lasted 86 years, and the stone lock alongside dates from 1899 and is substantially what stands today, minus the oak beams and plus hydraulics. The Environment Agency runs it now. Shepperton's other claim on the imagination is literary: the operator points out that H. G. Wells set part of The War of the Worlds here in 1898, with the Martians attacking people trying to escape across the ferry.
Walk north and use Walton Bridge. That is the official Thames Path alternative — National Trails describes it as a primarily road route, in contrast to the towpath on the south bank you would have reached by boat. In winter, when the ferry works weekends only, that road route is the weekday answer by default.
The operator only describes one, at the bottom of the quayside steps on the Weybridge bank, to be rung on the quarter hour. On the Shepperton side you are standing beside the office and the coffee shop, so the boat can see you. No published source confirms a signal there.
Because nobody publishes it. Not the operator, not the Environment Agency, not Surrey, Spelthorne or Elmbridge councils, not National Trails. The only figure anyone gives is the fifteen-minute cycle, and that is a headway, not a crossing time. Inventing one would be easy and wrong.
At weekends, yes. From November to February the operator publishes a Saturday and Sunday service on the same 9am to 5.30pm hours, with no weekday sailings. The daily service resumes in March.
Yes. A single with a bike is £5.00 for an adult and £2.50 for a child. Oddly, the return with a bike is £6.00 and £3.00 — identical to the return without one — so the bicycle supplement only applies one way.
No. Nauticalia states that its only retail outlet is now its Portsmouth store inside the Historic Dockyard. What remains on Ferry Lane is the company's head office, the Ferry Coffee Shop and a courtyard of small businesses. Some walking guides have not caught up.
£20.00 for an adult and £10.00 for a child, which pays off from about the fourth crossing. It exists because a handful of people use this boat as a commute rather than as a day out — there is no other pedestrian crossing between here and Walton Bridge.
No. The Environment Agency's restriction, in force from 3 August 2026 until further notice, applies to navigation between Penton Hook Lock and Shepperton Lock — a rule for boats working the reach, with Shepperton as its downstream limit. It is not a ferry suspension, and the agency's river conditions for Shepperton read clear.