Feels very strange arriving so close to where I grew up by boat, because the vista is new to me and yet the place names are so familiar and evocative of so many memories. My granny lived in London in her final years. Growing up in Orkney, you would have thought that would be the last place she would want to be and yet she loved the buzz of the city and much preferred it to village life. I remember frequent trips into London as a child, travelling by car along the A10 to visit her, the journey seeming interminably long and boring! The A10, in my mind’s eye, was just a mass of tightly packed houses, lining the road, all rather dull, as we passed through Cheshunt, Enfield and then the outskirts of London itself. Even back then we would be delayed in traffic jams, especially on the North Circular and the building of the M25 was a major event in my teenage years.
My brother, 14 years older than me, worked near Cheshunt in his late twenties so returned home to live and I can still remember the frustration of my mother never really knowing if he would be home for supper or if he would have made a last minute decision to spend his evening in London – he had the best of both worlds! Then Broxbourne was where we got the fast train link to London so many a time my long suffering father would drive us there or collect us from Broxbourne so that we didn’t have to wait an extra half an hour for the less frequent train to our local station, St Margaret’s. Hoddesdon was where we went to the doctor and slightly better shopping than Ware. I think it was also where the secondary modern school was, so if you didn’t get into Ware or Hertford grammar, that was the alternative. Rye House was known for its power station and infact that’s where we travelled to find a mooring. The best guides for mooring information are the Pearson’s maps but sadly no one has written one for the River Lee and Stort so mooring is guess work!
We left Waltham Town shortly before 0930 and came across regular locks, all fairly heavy going and time consuming to fill. The first lock already had a narrowboat coming down, with a delightful retired couple who were moving their boat to Godalming for a couple of years, having spent the last two years at a marina in Hertford. They were almost on a reverse journey to ours, although I don’t think I want to spend quite so long on the Lee and Stort! I would like to go on the River Wey at some point and as it’s owned by the National Trust, you don’t have to pay fees to the CRT. So, although mooring fees may be more costly, the licence fee is less expensive – I learnt all this in a five minute exchange of information as we waited for the lock to empty and our boats passed one another!
I was impressed by how green and lush the fauna alongside the river looked with many wild flowers adorning the banks and adjacent fields and marshes. As we travelled further along so the River widened out and we were passed by quite a few small electric boats, hired out on an hourly basis. One in particular didn’t seem to be moving out of our path and then I spied a paddle and rightly deduced that their power had failed and they were on their mobiles trying to get some assistance. I did offer to tow them but fortunately they did not think that was necessary!
As we travelled through Broxbourne I was reminded of friends of ours who live near Farnham but grew up locally to here and infact were married by my dad at Gt Amwell church. We haven’t seen them since covid struck but I sent them a message telling them where we were. Strangely, they were returning from a trip to Cambridge and so we met at a pub in Hoddesdon where we moored up and they could easily park! The Fish & Eels looked to be doing a roaring trade. As we hadn’t pre-booked they couldn’t offer us food but we could have a drink with them in the garden, alongside our boat. The weather was idyllic and so we spent an hour or so enjoying an unexpected encounter with our long standing friends.
Unfortunately we couldn’t stay on the pub mooring overnight so reluctantly continued our journey, even though the moorings, according to the satellite view on Google maps, looked few and far between. The river was beautiful as it meandered along but there was little opportunity to moor as the banks were overgrown with weeds and too shallow to allow the boat to get close to the towpath. We passed the power station at Rye Park and R suggested we moor before the next lock. Easier said than done. Our first attempt banked us onto rocks which then entailed alot of reversing to regain the deeper centerline of the river. As we turned a corner, the lock immediately visible, there were a few boats moored on the right but it was obviously private mooring. On the left we decided we could just fit behind a narrowboat that looked rather abandoned and gingerly headed towards the bank. Somehow R managed to alight and then wanted me to attach our plank between the stern and the towpath but it wasn’t long enough. However we were able to fit the plank at the bow end, to my mind in a very precarious position. R said this would be good practice for when we travel the Kennett & Avon as the banks there are notoriously unkempt! Having walked the plank onto the boat I have no intention of using it again unless absolutely necessary!
NarrowboatTLC 