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 to today was Denham Deep Lock, the deepest on the Grand Union at 11 ft 1 inch. It does look deep when you are at the bottom and also from the lock side above. Usually you can tie up your boat with the centre rope to keep your boat to one side and let the second boat in - Centre ropes are usually 12 feet long, so not much use in this lock!
The canal then follows the Colne Valley for quite a long way, with a series of gravel workings on the left of the canal with only a towpath between. The canal also has the river feeding into it and going off again at various weirs along its length. The significant rainfall was very evident in the canal - sometimes we were working really hard against the flow and once the flow had disappeared off through a weir the canal became more manageable again. When we came here last year - then it was at the very beginning of May - you could see the lakes quite clearly then. Not so much today!
We needed to get into this lock and you can see a significant amount of water coming into the canal from the right. It was significantly higher than usual and the towpath on the left is flooded!
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At this point we were travelling with another boat. Chris had gone to open the lock gates so that rather than us having to wait just outside the lock in the path of that water we could go straight in. The boat was tied up and so I had to wait for Chris to come back and untie me, so our companion boater went first. You have to point the bow as much into the flow of the water as possible, but as soon as you do so that pressure of water moves the bow of the boat sharply off to the left as you can see by the angle he is travelling at!
It feels pretty scary, as the boat hits the left bank of the canal due to the force of the water. But I regained control and got it back into the lock alongside our friend OK. While I was waiting, I took this photo of the canoe course that is set up here because they obviously expect significant flow. We didn't see any canoeists or paddle boarders out today!
We passed this factory relic, which we had last year too - the bear in the kayak is still hanging up there!
I hadn't remembered that there was a Tesco on the canal near Rickmansworth. I would say that the quality of it's moorings was rather better than the Sainsbury's had been yesterday!
Amusingly, I have a very similar photo to this one below from last year. It suggests that the boat has moved very little in the last 18 months! I suspect that is typical of very many boats on this stretch of canal - a lot of them are used for long term accommodation. We've also seen a lot of sunken boats, some that must have been there months. We read a report on a news website recently that Marlow had just had a project to remove some wrecks from the Thames in it's area. I sort of imagine there is not the same pressures here, though it is rather sad that that is so.
And this is the last lock we did today. I think it is pretty clear that it is full! As soon as you open the paddles on the lower gates the water stops flowing over the top of the lock gate and goes out through the normal sluice gates. This really does show how high the water is in the canal at the moment. When we moored just above this lock we discovered that our fenders were too short to reach the space between the bank and the boat because the water in the canal lifts the boat above the bank by as much as 7 or 8 inches higher than it might normally be.
A bit of rain is expected overnight, but I am hoping it doesn't add to much to the water in the canal. The next three days give us not a very long stretch of canal to do - about 7 or 8 miles in fact - but about 16 or so locks each day. We have done 11 and a half miles today and 10 locks. We've arranged to travel with our fellow boater tomorrow - he's on his own so benefits a lot from travelling with us. It helps us too, so we are hoping for dry weather at 9.00am tomorrow!! Let's see!!!
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