Monday 30th October 2017

The first time we have surfaced to a frost this morning, but the wind is very light and the sun is out. Our first task looks to be a gentle warm-up – a lock with only a foot drop on it. However, when we reach it, we find that an added complication has been added by putting a swing bridge in the middle of the lock. This adds a bit of excitement to our progress.

Following this, we have ten whole miles of lock-free progress until we get to Cosgrove. The warmth of the sun gradually begins to get through and the canal slowly stops steaming. Most of today will be spent in, or on the edge of, the sprawl of Milton Keynes.

From the canal, MK is very pleasant (not for a minute suggesting that it’s not the same from the land, any MK dwellers). Nowhere does it feel particularly urban. It runs North on the Eastern outskirts of the town and then West round its Northern edges. Finally, we reach Wolverton, which may well be a part of MK now, but feels from a markedly different age. For a good half-mile, the South bank of the canal is dominated by the old red brick railway works, now sadly decaying rapidly. Apparently the Royal Train is housed here – hope it is not as open to vandalism as the buildings seem to be.

We moor up at The Navigation pub at Thrupp Wharf, where we meet up with Eric, Jill’s Dad, for lunch. The food and drink are excellent, both Jill and I having swordfish steak and we have a very pleasant time reviewing our progress, or lack of when compared to doing the same journey by car. Replete and in no mood to do anything much more today, we retire to the boat and batten down.

Sunday 29th October 2017

The clocks have gone back, so an extra hour in bed. Sun is shining and all is boding well. We walk to my Dad’s for a coffee before we set off. Consequently, Jill has done nearly all her steps, according to the gizmo she carries on her wrist, for the day by the time we get back to the boat.

So a relatively short day on the water today, especially as the sun is going down earlier now. Only five locks to accomplish to Fenny Stratford and three of them are in a flight manned by Canal & River Trust Volunteers, so we literally zip down them.

It’s surprising how quickly Leighton Buzzard is left behind and how rural and remote the landscape feels between it and the start of Milton Keynes (which as far as the canal is concerned, really starts at Water Eaton). We meet several hire boats out from Leighton Buzzard beetling back to meet their handover times.

Sadly, we pass by two canalside pubs, the Globe and The Three Locks, but we have places to be and the timing isn’t right for a halt. We moor up in Fenny Stratford as planned, batten down and turn on the heating – it’s cooling down rapidly this evening.

Saturday 28th October 2017

A day of contrasts as far as people are concerned today. We set off with lots of locks ahead of us and the seven lock flight of Marsworth as a gentle warm-up. But lo and behold, two Samaritans turn up by way of Canal and River Trust volunteers, so we breeze down them. To boot, Keith and Gary are cheery company. And at the bottom, Keith arranges with the boat just leaving that lock to wait for us at the next one, so all looks set for a good day.

Well, the two lads do wait at the next lock, so all is well. But as we arrive at the next lock behind the other boat, blow me if someone with bow thrusters doesn’t surge themselves out into the middle of the canal between us and the boat in front to take our place. The look on Jill’s face tells a story – I am pretty certain that they will not be getting a Christmas card, more likely a sprig of holly placed strategically to inflict maximum discomfort.

Later a boat coming the other way appears to be crewed by one person and he is very friendly. But then we realise that his wife is sat on the back of the boat like the Duchess of Muck and can’t even be bothered to say hello to us.

And then finally, a man washing his boat is swearing loudly at his wife at the same time for failing to operate the water supply correctly. All in all, a mixed day, and after such a promising start too. We moor up on the southern edge of Leighton Buzzard for the night and batten down the hatches against all who would be miserable.

Friday 27th October 2017

What a glorious morning – crisp, clear and a delight to be outdoors in. The weather lasts all day, although not as hot as Wednesday, a much more typically seasonal day. The colouring of the trees is spectacular as we reach the Tring summit.

So what else to report today? A bit of a dearth of plastic animals – just one bear and that is finely carved out of wood. We also pass a totem pole in the centre of Berkhamsted, which according to our book, was imported from Canada by the owner of a timber yard which used to stand by the canal at this point.

Sewer Lock is not as aptly named as one might think – it is the closest lock to the sewage works near Berkhamsted, but it is the lock below this (Winkwell) that has a somewhat off-putting stew in it (I have taken great care typing in its spelling, as I don’t want the stew to end up with further connotations).

14 locks gets us to the summit – all downhill from here then. During our cruise along the summit pound, we come across two paddle boarders. I presume that they are pretty skilled at using them, as falling in a canal never seems that inviting a prospect.

We’re meeting up with Jo and Steve tonight at the Grand Junction Arms at Bulbourne, which according to our book, is a Victorian canalside pub. Enough said.

Thursday 26th October 2017

A stationary M25

Bridge 154 at Hemel Hempstead

A stationary M25

Bridge 154 at Hemel Hempstead

We set ourselves the target of 14 locks today, getting us to the far side of Hemel Hempstead, but achieve 18. What is going on? Jill informs me that she’s walked 6.64 kilometres. I have probably done 0.64, but someone’s got to be the tubby on the boat. But maybe another reason for not stopping too close to Hemel is that we meet our first stone-throwers, although not at us, but at the boat we have just crossed with. Also, what looks suspiciously like the remains of Class A drugs at a lock, although considerately, the users seem to have taken their needles with them.

We have a discussion about the origins of the term ‘bingo wings’. Jill ventures the suggestion that it comes from old ladies who, when they get a winning bingo line, raise their bingo wings. Well, having looked it up online (such a fine thing for useless information is Google), I can tell you that she was right, as I find the following definition: ‘1990s: from an association with the game of bingo, in which the loose flesh may be visible when a winner calls out and raises their card’.

Today’s main artificial animal sighting is the head and neck of a very large dinosaur protruding over a hedge. Whether the rest of the body is taking up the majority of their garden is open to doubt.

A thoroughly gratifying sight awaits us beyond Hunton Bridge – the M25 pretty much stationary, while we steam along at a mighty….3 miles an hour. This may seem ungracious to the morning commuters, but I’ve sat in that queue enough times to feel I’ve paid my dues.

We moor up at the The Three Horseshoes pub in Bourne End, indicating that we will be forced to go and try their ale. Our book tells us that it is a ‘traditional British pub, dating from 1535, with open fires, a most unusual stone sett and tile floor, and real ale. The sett and floor sound fascinating and so we feel obliged to pay it a visit.

Wednesday 25th October 2017

Even Donald Trump might get the message today – the end of October and its shorts and T-shirt weather. And that’s not just me, half the population seem to be similarly attired.

It must be the weather, but everything runs incredibly smoothly today and we make excellent progress, mooring eventually at Cassiobury Park in Watford.

Leaving Uxbridge, we pass under the A40 and soon are running through an area previously used to build a large amount of London and its suburbs. The old gravel pits run up through the Denham, Harefield and Rickmansworth areas. They are long since worked out, and now provide watery amenities (sailing, fishing, water skiing, etc.), or habitat for many species of wildfowl.

Today, we (the “we” being somewhat royal, as I spend a lot more time on the boat than working the locks) manage 11 locks, including Denham Deep, a cavernous, slimy hole with a rise / fall of 11 foot 1 inch. This makes me wonder which the deepest canal lock in England and Wales is. The answer turns out to be Tuel Lane Lock on the Rochdale Canal at 19 foot 18½ inches – the half inch somehow seems so irrelevant.

We moor up at Rickmansworth to stock up with essential provisions – wine, cake and puddings. Our 5-a-day (or however many it is now) are covered by grapes in the wine and the fruit cake, so all is well. We both lived in Ricky for a while, but not with particularly happy memories, so we don’t dally once we’ve got the provisions.

At Lot Mead Lock just North of Rickmansworth, we meet quite a cavalcade coming towards us. There are two very wide barges, so wide and long that they only just fit in the lock, and two tugs, as the barges have no power. The two barges are being taken to Paddington, where they will become floating restaurants. They have been fitted out at a boat builder at Watford. To make things comical, the boats have been newly painted to a design by a famous artist, so the swarthy lads tasked with getting these boats down to Paddington are terrified of scraping them in the locks. As each lock is taking upwards of an hour to negotiate (with three lock fills and empties at each one to get the whole cavalcade down, this is going to be a nerve-racking journey for them, one feels.

I mentioned imitation animals and people earlier. Well, the folk in these parts have gone mad on the animal front. Alligators, sloths, monkeys, cats, dogs, leopards, lions, tigers, elephants. The best must be the 6 foot monkey hung from a girder of a disused warehouse, about 60 foot up in the air. Now that took some dedication to put in place.

Tuesday 24th October 2017

Slow progress at the start of our day. The first locks are electrically operated, but there are two locks and it turns out that we are trying to use the wrong one. Then we catch up with a large 14 foot wide barge just before the next lock, so we can’t share the lock with them, and they have to open and close both gates to get the barge in and out of a lock (a slow process with only two people). We follow them up the 10 locks, although to be fair, after the second of these, the guy prepares the next lock for them, then nips back on his bike to help prepare ours. In all, the ten locks raise us 83 feet; a couple of them are more leaky than a ham and leek pie.

We pass what used to be Ealing Mental Hospital, a depressing place if ever there was one. I get a picture of it with Jill in front at the lock.

Now we get a 5-mile lock pound (i.e. no locks). We stop to fill up with water, go to Tesco for provisions and have lunch at Bulls Bridge Junction, where the Paddington arm of the Grand Union Canal branches off to head right into London. We moor against a narrowboat from the Hillingdon Narrowboats Association, who organise trips on the water for young people. They are just finishing off a 5-day trip doing the other Thames Ring – down the Paddington arm of the Grand Union to the River Thames at Limehouse, up the Thames and back up the length of the Grand Union that we have just done.

London suburbia and miles of moored boats are the main features from now until we moor at Uxbridge for the night. I squeeze the boat into a mooring space hardly bigger than its length and feel very satisfied with myself.

Monday 23rd October 2017

We leave Shepperton doing its London suburbia thing – people running for trains, mums dropping the kids off at school in 4×4’s, joggers thronging the towpath – and pootle off for our date with destiny on the tidal River Thames. At Sunbury Locks, the lock keeper is full of cheeriness and bonhomie, so much so that we chat for way longer than it takes to empty a lock. He even says that we’ll be fine on the tidal stretch – music to my ears.

Loads of morning rowers are out on the river, and some canoeists too. Nearly all either young girls, or older women. They certainly move a lot faster than we do once they get going and I spend the morning dodging them.

We pass Hampton Court, with friendly signs saying that boaters are welcome to moor – we like Hampton Court. It is interesting to see how many signs that used to have ‘No Mooring’ on them have had the ‘No’ painted out. Possibly the waterways version of putting speed cameras out of action?

Many of the riverfront houses and bungalows at this end of the Thames are small. Presumably, they cost about the same as the mansions further up the Thames. It’s amazing what people will put in their gardens – we’ve seen plastic cows and sheep, Shrek and Fiona, five foot gnomes and a Morris Minor to name but a few on this journey.

At Kingston, a massive John Lewis looms beside the river. I persuade Jill that the things that look like moorings outside are really machine gun posts. I don’t think it works, but we manage to get past with only minor spasms from Jill.

And so to Teddington locks, where we will venture onto the tidal bit down to Brentford. We visit the lock keeper to check up on timings to leave. Not before 17:10 he says (high tide is at 17:45). Jill then charms him to the point where she negotiates 16:30, only to learn that he goes off duty shortly, so it will be another lock keeper who sees us through.

We spend the afternoon whiling away the time. A trip into Teddington, where I lived 30 years ago, reveals that amazingly, it has all changed since then. Even the ancient church we pass is a forgotten memory to me. We walk up to see my old flat – it’s still there at least.

Back to the boat and at about 16:15, Jill sends me to charm the lock keeper. Amazingly, it works – it may be the strong scent of damp clothes and my downtrodden appearance that wins the day. Through the lock and onto the tidal Thames. The boat struggles against the tide, but does keep moving forward all the time. And we manage to find the turning onto the Grand Union Canal, which is well hidden coming downstream. A result all round, and the cream on the cake is that the lock keeper at Brentford hasn’t given up on us and is still there to let us through. We moor up immediately after the lock, only to find that this is still technically the river, so we need to put a ‘long line’ on the mooring rope to prevent us finding ourselves hanging off the bank in the morning.

Sunday 22nd October 2017

Departing our mooring on the edge of Old Windsor, we immediately pass Magna Carta Island on our left, where apparently the famous document was signed, while on our right, there are memorials to John F Kennedy, the Air Forces and Magna Carta. The Air Forces Memorial is the only one that we see, perched on the top of the hill, and listing 20,000 missing Commonwealth airmen.

Staines from the waterfront is amazingly pleasant to the eye. And they have made significant efforts to welcome boaters, with ample free mooring space. From here to our mooring place for the night, the bank is crowded with a huge variety of dwellings, some grand, but many quite plain and ordinary. Jill’s inspection of estate agent’s windows reveals that even the tawdry little ones fetch a princely sum in this neck of Britain.

The River Wey Navigation joins the Thames by Shepperton Lock, navigable for 19 miles upstream apparently. But we decide not today thank you, as the wind is increasing fairly dramatically again. Is Storm Brian not quite the pussycat that we expected with a name like that?

We moor up at Lower Shepperton. As we come in to moor, another boat comes towards us and then turns back to follow us. And then as we come in to the bank, we find mooring pins already staked in the ground. How thoughtful of the nice people of Shepperton we think. But it turns out that the other boat has just decided to turn round ad come back to moor where it was before. Still, there’s room for us as well.

Saturday 21st October 2017

Today, we are staying put outside Old Windsor, mainly because of Storm Brian (a great name for a storm; one wonders whether it will bother working itself up at all). But also, it gives us a chance to catch up on a couple of household chores. We venture into Egham by bus to find the launderette, which turns out not to be a do-it-yourself one. But we decide it is worth £12 to have someone else manhandle our undies into the washing machine. I’m hoping that the lady doing the job has some stout industrial gloves handy for the task.

While we wait, we wander up Egham High Street, visit the supermarket to stock up with food, and then pop into the pub. Egham is not quite what we expected. Although all the cars seem to be flashy, the High Street reeks of decay and poverty (admittedly, most of the cars are just circumnavigating their way around the edge of the town to Waitrose). I make myself feel good by buying a copy of The Big Issue, which turns out to be an excellent read. Arnando Ianucci is the guest editor for this copy and Alan Partridge and Malcolm Tucker “debate” Brexit. I find myself laughing out loud in the pub that we visit to while away the time while our undies revolve.

So the photos today are of Egham High Street and the boat – best I could do, unless you want one of the Number 8 bus on its way back to Old Windsor to drop us off. We while away the afternoon on the boat, watching Final Score and reading the paper, while the wind howls away outside. It’s an action-packed life.