Tue 2nd April
A wet day with no plans to move. We had arranged to meet two other Canal
Ministries couples, Henry and Lin, and Alan and Geraldine for lunch. Only the
date and town had been arranged. No venue or time.
How not to organise an event
Henry rang and said we are to meet at the coffee shop almost
opposite Wetherspoons. He couldn’t remember the name of it. We found that the
Berkhamsted Wetherspoons was the Crown, and there were two cafes opposite: Bel
Caffe and Black Goo. We were a few minutes early, and it was raining, so we
opted for Bel Caffe, and told the lady that we were waiting for friends. After
we had dripped water on her floor from our brollies, we had a call from Lin to say
that they were in Mario’s a little further back. We apologised to the lady, and
told her we were in the wrong place, and we left to find Mario’s. Then we had a
call from Henry also to say they were in Mario’s. We spotted him on his phone
across the road outside the library, so we crossed the road to join him. As we
did so, we spotted Mario’s on the same side where we had been! Apparently,
Mario’s had no toilet, so Henry went to find the one in the library. We crossed
back to Mario’s and found Lin on her own. When Henry returned, he said this
wasn’t the place, and where we had been was probably the right place. So we
went back to Bel Caffe and explained to the lady there why we were back. Henry
phoned Alan, who was already in Berkhamsted, looking for somewhere to park.
Eventually he and Geraldine arrived and finally we all had a coffee. It was
very good coffee!
Before we went for lunch, Alan had to move his car, and we
needed to buy a card, and Lin needed to go to Boots. We returned with our card,
and found Henry, who said he had informed Alan that we were having lunch at the
Kings Arms. This was not the right place, and is next door to the Crown, where
we were going.
The
Crown and the Kings Arms
These pubs are
probably so named because the Anglo-Saxons surrendered to the Normans under
William the Conqueror here at Berkhamsted Castle, after the Battle of Hastings.
After more texts and calls we finally all assembled in the
Crown! The meal was good Wetherspoons fare and the fellowship was great. Thank
you, Henry, for “organising” it. Thankfully we have mobile phones these days. 😊
No boating today
Wed 3rd April
Today was meant to be wet, but we had lovely sunshine all
day until late afternoon. We found that some large birds had left their
visiting cards on our boat roof, maybe because we had been moored under a tree.
We pottered round the shops and some market stalls (fudge for James!) before
moving the boat further down where there are mooring rings and no trees. James
washed the starboard side of the boat and removed the offending items. At about
4.30pm James checked his emails and discovered that the work on the lock had
finished at 11.30am. We could have set off in the sunshine if we had checked
earlier.
Our sunny mooring in
Berkhamsted
No boating today
Thu 4th April
After our good experience in Bel Caffe on Tuesday, we
decided to give them our breakfast business this morning. Avocado on toast for
Hazel, and Eggs Royale for James. We then bought a few items in Tesco Express
before getting the boat ready for departure.
As were going down the first lock of the day, lock 54, the lady
from the boat moored behind us, Manatee,
came to chat. We complimented her on the lovely flowers in the bows of her
boat.
Berkhamsted has many historic houses, including, in the High
Street, the oldest timber-framed building in England, which we missed. The
castle we have seen before. There is also a genuine Canadian totem pole on the
site of Alsford’s timber yard. The history is here. And a
roses and castles plaque dedicated to Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of
Bridgewater, who built the “first” canals near Manchester, about a hundred
years after the Wey Navigation opened.
Memorial plaque
The weather today was very cloudy and damp, and it started
to rain as we were in lock 55, so we stopped on the lock bollards of lock 56 to
wait for the worst to pass. After 15 minutes it eased off, and another boat
came up through the lock, so we took the opportunity and went down.
We had hoped to use the elsan and water point by bridge
142a, but there was a large boat moored there, and it looked like a permanent
mooring. Moving on, we came to Top Side Lock, no 56, where we saw two men in
orange overalls, looking like escapees from Guantanamo Bay. They had been doing
the work on the lock to seal the brickwork and stop the leaks. I asked them if
it was still necessary to leave the lock empty, and was told that it was. So,
not a lot of confidence in their leak-stopping exercise then. After leaving
lock 57, we realised we had something on the prop, so we stopped on the lock
bollards, and James removed what appeared to be a woolly hat.
After Lock 58 it started to rain again, so we decided that
we had done enough for the day. We looked for moorings after bridge 145, but
they all needed mooring pins – no fun wielding a mallet in the rain. We had
seen some piling just before the bridge, so we reversed through the bridge, and
discovered that it was shallow at the edge. We reversed a little more, and
found a deeper place behind another boat.
In view of the stoppage and the weather, we have revised our
schedule, and are now aiming for Kings Langley Baptist Church for Sunday,
instead of Watford. We have seen only
two other boats moving since we arrived in Berkhamsted on Monday.
6 locks, 2 miles dep
1100 arr 1345
Fri 5th April
Today was much brighter and sunny at times. We left our mooring and went down through two
locks to where we had intended to be last night, by the Three Horseshoes pub.
We were pleased we had stayed where we were, as there was a lot of noise from
the A41 which is very close at this point.
Winkwell Swing bridge is fully automatic and operated with a
CRT key. There is a busy boatyard here and some grit blasting was happening –
more noise. A boat came up Winkwell Bottom Lock 61, and it was a guy who
usually runs a coal boat. He had just bought this boat, possibly for his
daughter who was with him. She had just hurt herself getting her fingers caught
in a rope, and yesterday hitting her leg with a mallet.
Winkwell Swing Bridge
Winkwell Lock 61
Lovely spring flowers
We moved on down through Boxmoor and discovered a widebeam
going down Lock 65 in front of us. We soon caught them up, as there was a queue
for the water tap by lock 66. As we only wanted rubbish and cassette
facilities, we overtook and went down through the lock. We moored on the
offside where there were some bollards near Sainsbury’s.
A very pleasant elderly gentleman on the next boat told us
that a new store had just opened – The Range, with an Iceland section. We went
there first and bought some flowers for the boat roof, plus some compost. Also
some frozen food. The place was really
busy as it was their grand opening day.
We took everything back to the boat before Hazel went to
Sainsbury’s, and James planted the marigolds. He also put some more grease in
the stern gland greaser.
Moored at Hemel
Hempstead
Marigolds
Water art
8 locks, 2 miles, 1 swing bridge. Dep 1010, arr 1310
Tomorrow: move to Kings Langley for the Baptist Church on
Sunday, before continuing south to Brentford and the Thames later in the week.
