Saturday,  9th January

A day of moving down more than along as we tackled 10 locks descending from the village of Marsworth, just after the Tring cutting, in the direction of Leighton Buzzard. The promised sun, shown in full on the weather app, never managed to quite break through the low lying cloud, so much of the day was seen through a white mist, beautiful but errie. A postal delivery in the form of our friend K, from Amazon,  with extra supplies of gloves, a hat and scarf, arrived mid morning just as we were enjoying an ‘extra hot’ cup of hot chocolate from the cafe discovered the previous day and it was well worth the calories! K took the opportunity to film R and I operating a lock. Of course R was doing all the physical labour – I  just guided Wind Rose seamlessly into the lock chamber! We tied up near to Ivinghoe but sadly did not have time to visit what looks to be an interesting village. We had to be ready for a Zoom quiz at 5pm with our Wombler friends (so named because of the many walks done together over the years, post a Round Table connection) followed by a quiz at 7pm with our church friends. To give you an idea of our quiz capabilities,  we came bottom in the Womblers and top in the church! Not that the church quiz had any religious content.  It had interesting rounds such as naming savoury food dishes from  anagrams and creating a new word by adding one letter to a word having been given clues as to what boh words should mean. Anyway the main reason for coming top was that we combined forces with another couple (via WhatsApp) who happen to be particularly good at quizzes! I would really recommend using Whattsapp and Zoom in tandem as it makes for a much more sociable event. You do have to keep one device muted to prevent feedback but it worked a treat! Of course all this quizzing didn’t leave much time for a gourmet meal so see under ‘recipes’ the 5 minute dinner called pesto tortellini! I seem to have a lot of meals with pesto – I bought a large jar with me from Costo so am having to find imaginative ways to use it up!