Still going up - to Berkhamsted

Spelling English Place names is tricky isn't it.  Yesterday we were in Hemel Hempstead and today we've got as far as Berkhamsted.  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 and one closer to the back.  As driver, he needs to get up the ladder at the back of the lock. For no real reason the arrangement of ladders switched sides. I wonder why!

At Winkwell there is a big marina which does lots of repairs, or at least it has lots of boats in need of repair.  I have compared this picture to last year's and they does in fact look as though the boats are not the same!

Almost immediately after the lock by the boat yard marina, you come up to this swing bridge.  It works with a key and the lights flash and claxon sounds and the barriers come down all based on the press of a button.  Very satisfactory! I only inconvenienced one car and a pedestrian and they were very good about it! 

The next lock we came to was empty, and as I walked up to it, a man was closing the paddle on the bottom gate so that he could fill the lock.  Etiquette on the canal is that you wait for the boat coming from the direction where the water level is already prepared.  He very clearly did his best not to hear me shout at him to wait! So we left him to get on with the lock by himself.  I don't think he was pleased either.  He warned us that there was a bit log in the canal by the mooring bollards outside.  In fact it had been swept into the lock when the other man had used it, and it made it difficult to open the gate.  It was absolutely saturated and Matt had real difficult lifting it out - Chris and I supported it and kept it in place so Matt could grip it.  We felt as though it was our (mostly Matt's) good deed for the day! 

On the way into Berkhamsted we passed a number of cottages at the locks.  This one was rather pretty and said it dated from 1805 and was the design of John Field - quite unusual to have the architect's name on a house!

                                    

We had successfully completed 9 locks before lunch and we were somewhat seduced by the prospect of lunch at The Rising Sun, a pub on the eastern edge of Berkhamsted which Matt had been to before, so even though it was dry and actually almost sunny, we stopped for a beer and a ploughmans and very lovely it was too.  The pub was small and very quirky.  When Matt had visited a few weeks ago in the evening there was barely even standing room. It was much quieter today, and very satisfactory.  

After lunch we returned to the boats to do another 5 locks which are all fairly central in Berkhamsted.  By the time we got to the last two, it had started raining which was not part of the deal! First we passed this pretty cottage, with squiffy chimneys which were rather interesting and with a very pretty garden.

The centre of the town takes quite a lot of notice of the canal and there are a number of pubs and also modern developments along the water front.  There are a couple of bridges at the start of the main town and at the other end that have very nice decorative plaques on them.  I'm not sure about the Port of Berkhamsted which is what the one on the left says.  The one on the right focuses on the 33 miles to Brentford Lock where we left the Thames. 

I wasn't sure about this hippo, either!!

Or this totem pole - I did photograph that last year...!   Is it a part of the town development or does it belong to the owner of the flat that looks out over it?  And is that the upstairs flat or the downstairs one?

We kept going, past the Waitrose that has a mooring space outside it, and just a bit along from that, we came upon this boat?  Is it a real boat or a bath toy?  I'll leave you to decide.  The only part of the day tomorrow that does not have a prediction of rain is between 9.00 and 12.00 am, so I think we shall be ready to go then to make the most of the morning. We've got 5 locks to do to get to the top of the system at the top of the Chilterns effectively, and then we start to go down again to Marsworth.  It'll be quite nice to have a whole 3 miles without a lock!