Voyage of the Spurvehog, 2024

 We woke up to a completely blue sky this morning - cold and clear.  It did all look very fresh and autumnal.  We almost immediately drove past the fields that we saw last night on our way to the closed pub.  The flooding still looked pretty extreme, and whilst the water had gone down where we had moored, it was still high in the field next to the pub.  Not much chance of walking your dog and annoying the cows in that field at the moment. (That's what the notice on the gate warns you not to do!) The canal very much followed the route of the river, and so the canal too meandered around a lot - lots of bends, some of them with bridges on them, and some of them with bridges and boats coming the other way! Our first three locks were at Soulbury less than an hour after we had started.  Three locks are extremely close together and you need to manage the water so that you don't flood the pub - the white building by he third lock. We had the benefit of volunteers t...

It rained quite hard this morning.  Chris had a sequence of zoom calls which meant that to get to Leighton Buzzard we needed to move early, and then stop whilst he had his calls.  Unfortunately it was really not a good idea to move anywhere at 8.00am.  We thought we'd have a go at 9.30am, but that was wet too.  And then Chris 11.00am call was cancelled, and so we had from 10.45 am until 12.00 to make some progress, so despite the rain which started again whilst we had been dithering about what to do, we set off.  It's really not fun doing locks in the rain.  The first two were very close together which helped, and then we had to travel about half a mile to the third.  By this time we needed to moor up again so Chris could do his 12.00 noon call!  We were moored by this building.  I'm not sure what it is, and I didn't go to investigate, but my guess would be a pumping station of some sort! The countryside had very much opened up after the narr...

We woke up to the sound of showers on the boat, but by 9.15 it was bright sunshine, so we we set off to get through the 5 locks until we got to the summit of the Chilterns and then started down the other side. We set off to do the first lock.  The pound (the water between two locks) that we were in had really filled up over night,  but the pound we were about to get into was really low.  It made very little sense, but we successfully got through to the second lock. Unfortunately, just as we did so, Chris managed to get the rear rope caught in the propellor which cut it, so whilst we were in the second lock he had a look at the weed hatch. There was no rope to be found there, but a goodly amount of blue wire, old plastic bags and bits of stuff, which thankfully he removed.  It's not a lovely job and I can't kneel to do it.....! We successfully got up the next two locks and were just entering the final lock up when the rain started again.  It was hard for a little...

Spelling English Place names is tricky isn't it.  Yesterday we were in Hemel Hemp stead and today we've got as far as Berkham sted.  Ridiculous. Anyway we will start with some geography. This first picture shows how there is a canal, a road (spot the red car) and a railway (the bridge).and there's also between the canal and the road, the original river.  This juxtaposition of different routeways is not by chance.  It was planned, and Robert Stephenson who planned the West Coast Mainline in 1838 followed the canal route for a lot of the way.  Good to see it all in one picture. We did 14 locks today, but the closest any pair got was 300 metres or so, so there is no real potential for getting into a rhythm, but our two boat convoy was good at working together.  Matt, our companion has to climb up the ladder to get onto the lockside to work the lock.  There are two ladders, one on each side of the canal, one near the front end of the canal as you drive in ...

 We set off as agreed with our fellow boater at 9.00am this morning.  The weather was not wet, just! Today we have done 15 locks, but only 6 and a third miles - the locks have come either singly with about half a mile between them or occasionally in pairs.  We have spent a lot of the journey today travelling around Watford, but not seeing Watford as you might imagine it at all.  It's been largely parks, golf courses, big houses with conference centres, and the River Gade of which I have never heard (apart from travelling it last year of course!)  A lot of the journey has been like this, with big trees - they must be more than 100 years old, I should think. This lock was the second we did which was called the Iron Bridge Lock where there was supposed to be a plaque unveiled by the Duke of Marlborough in 1987 to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the Grand Union Canal.  I had a look around and couldn't find it! There are extensive parklands to the left that l...

 Even I woke and heard the rain overnight.  It was certainly coming down heavily, and we woke up to the canal looking very different - almost all the green algae that had formed a carpet on the top of the canal had gone! The weather forecast had been clear that it would be dry from 9.00am and then probably wet again this afternoon.  In fact it was sort of mizzling during the morning but not actually raining.  So about 9.30am we decided we would brave it, and set off - Chris was driving and I was up for doing the locks.  As you can see there was so much water in the canal that it was pouring over the lower lock gates.  That was true for several of the locks we did today. This one is in a pretty setting. And you can see behind Chris and the boat as he came towards the lock that there's quite a nice park in the background. We are about 5 miles from Hayes, and Uxbridge is about 5 further on. It does actually look really rural along here. The third lock we came ...