After the Marsworth lock flight, we passed Bulbourne and moored in the summit cutting at Tring, a pleasant spot, only for Sorrel to find it was moored opposite an unofficial winding hole, used by the local trip boats, one of which, of course, had to arrive just after Sorrel was tied up!
Next were a nice couple of lazy days at Berkhamsted, complete with a new Waitrose alongside, and a
Moorings opposite the Canal Fields Park, Berkhamsted.
good laundrette, chippy, Indian and Chinese takeaways etc., up in the main street, not to mention a useful auto accessory shop(!) Then followed a long day's travel ending with a mooring below Lady Capel's Lock, which we didn't know was infamous!
Below Lady Capel's Lock.
Plenty of fishermen, till dusk, when they "all" went home. We'd just got into bed, when HW rocked - ODD! We both jumped up on deck to find we were out in the middle of the very wide water there - the rocking was a heavy foot giving us a parting shove-off into wide blue yonder!!! Out with the pole, and quant us back to the bank, where the pins were still lying in the grass - kind of them not to have chucked them into the water after us!. Apparently casting boats adrift is a local pastime at that lock....
We also saw an interesting patent slip.
The state of the GU is very variable - from quite poor to downright awful. The best lock is alongside BW's base at Hemel Hempstead, grass cut, bricks pointed, edges painted, gates and paddles all nicely workable, and one of the worst is the very next one, vandalised, nameless, ..... Quite a number of lock gates were completely immovable by one person alone, needing help from a second person; similarly many of the paddlegears were at the limit of my ability to wind them - some being beyond it. The result was that they were just left..... . This just leaves you feeling utterly winded after the effort of trying to move the wretched things, and thoroughly bloody-minded towards BW. Why SHOULD their poor maintenance be the cause of you getting a heart attack? We are supposed to be enjoying the canals, not being killed by them!
Sir John Knill's "Columba".
"Albert", at Rickmansworth (Batchworth Lock).
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