Author: Mary

The memory can play tricks. Yesterday when we walked along the towpath to the Globe pub, which must be about a mile or so before arriving in LB itself I really recognised very little and could not place where we had moored up previously and yet I felt certain we were near to where R had had his canal dip and that we had used a laundrette in LB to clean his clothes. So I decided to walk in again as my daily exercise and find the town centre. I don’t usually forget shops easily! Sure enough, as I got directions to the town centre I recognised the electric bike shop on the corner and then the way the walkway, without cars widens, with shops on either side and there is plenty of room for market traders on Tuesdays and Saturdays. The market had been there the last time we came but this one was much reduced, probably due to Covid essential restrictions. The traders had put 2m markings on the road so orderly queues could form, but there were not many punters, even though the stalls looked tempting. A great array of fruit and veg; an upmarket baker; a takeaway of samosas and the like, which looked delicious. I spotted a Wilko and donning mask and sanitizer headed in to replenish some hardware that was useful on the boat. One of the things we have had a bit of a struggle with is lighting. The boat lights are quite dim but we have a very useful desk lamp which we keep moving to wherever we are settled. I managed to buy a second desk lamp (although we can only use it when hooked up to mains electricity) for a fiver, which didn’t break the bank! However the bulbs were a fiver on top – brings to mind cheap printers and expensive printer ink! Faced with a wide array of bulbs I resorted to asking an assistant for help – luckily she had purchased the same lamp and knew exactly the bulbs to head for.

So LB is a pleasant English market town looking rather sad at the moment but I am sure on a sunny Saturday with the market in full swing it paints a different picture.

The afternoon cheered me greatly as I sat outside on the bow of the boat playing Trickster Bridge with the 3 girlfriends I have played bridge with for over 20 years although we haven’t been able to play online for a while for various reasons. My bridge, it turns out, was really rusty, with a few basic errors that annoyed me greatly. It’s such a good game for keeping the brain active so I don’t want to let it slip as my brain needs all the help it can get! Codewords are my other passion for brain games and a surefire way to help me fall asleep. Probably a better option than my current nightly pattern of watching an episode of the detective ‘Vera’. I have even started dreaming about murder! You may wonder why on a cold winter’s day I chose to sit outside on the boat. It was because it had turned into the most beautiful afternoon with a good smattering of blue sky and a little sun. I wrapped myself in many rugs and thanked God for the beauty around me. There is something so peaceful in watching reflections on still water.

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Oh the bliss of waking up to some instant heat. R, up before me, switched on the blow heater and by the time I got out of bed, after R bought me a cup of tea, the cabin was warm as toast! I soon felt the cold when I remembered the clothes soaking in cold water in the bath! Squeezing out the excess water I then proceeded to spin 3 loads of washing (the drum is rather small) and hung the garments on the strings I had put up in the boat for our Christmas cards! I really appreciated our cards this year as they were our chief form of decoration. R found some of them hung in awkward places for his 6ft plus frame! Being relatively short where they were hung made no difference to me!

We met our nice new neighbours who normally spend the UK winters in Spain and the warmer weather here on their narrowboat. However now in lockdown, Spain isn’t on the agenda. They seem very cheerful and not too worried about the possibility of a cold winter ahead. I must say life in a marina is much more relaxed than travelling around, hunting for essentials. Even today we walked along the towpath to see where we might possibly be able to moor up next as we think staying a month in the marina is a bit expensive, on top of our rental costs. There are so many considerations, one being where you can turn the boat. We found an Elsan and water going on towards Leighton Buzzard and think we can turn the boat by a short reverse and come back to a mooring near where we are now. But we had to find a turning point near here so that we can change the direction of the boat to go back to the waterpoint again. Fortunately, just below the lock we are presently at, there is space to turn a boat so I think after a week or two we will go back out onto the open canal. As if turning the boat isn’t stressful enough, sometimes you also have to operate a few locks just to get to where you need to go and then operate the locks on the return journey. This little stretch of water doesn’t involve any locks between the winding holes (or turning circles). Fortunately there looked to be two or three available moorings and a Tesco, Aldi and M&S foodstore all within easy reach! Of course in a weeks time they may be full but I would be surprised as the lock behind us is now closed.

Another plus of our hookup is that I can make use of our diddy slow cooker. Not only did I manage a hearty beef stew for tomorrow, I then poached some fish for our supper tonight, and have now put the oats and water in it ready for porridge for breakfast in the morning! Nigella Lawson eat your heart out!!

The rain is pattering on the roof and it looks like we might be in for a wet week although the weather forecast does often change nearer the date. Not sure we will even make much use of our outside exercise allowance if it involves getting wet – will be interesting to see what we can manage on the boat!

One slight disadvantage of where we are moored is that the mobile signal is intermittent so I am finding it difficult to upload pictures. Sorry you will just get a dull monologue! Not a lot is happening here – it’s probably the same for you!

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Attended our 10am Church service today on Zoom and it proved to be so much more meaningful than the services I have joined prerecorded  on Youtube. Our clergy were in the church building leading the service but all the congregation were in their homes and we could see each other on the Zoom platform. Additionally after the service ended we were all able to chat with one another. I really hope this is a way forward for the future.  Not that all the congregation are banned from the church building! Rather that once we can return to the building for worship we also continue Zooming the service so that those who cannot physically be with us, can at least be part of the worship in their own homes. I think the service will also be recorded so that it can be accessed on YouTube at a later time for those who cannot attend at 10am. I get so excited by the thought of the media possibilities that we have in all walks of life. I remember our son G having an old banger of a car and every time something went wrong he would just go to YouTube and sure enough   someone would have posted a video on how to fix the problem!

Once the morning service was over we donned our warm layers and got the boat moving. Just two locks to do to get forward of the lock that will be closed tomorrow for a few weeks.  Once through that lock we heaved a sigh of relief as we realised we no longer had a deadline.  Infact the opposite.  We now needed to find a good place to hunker down for however long necessary.  I was  looking at the map to see where a suitable mooring might be when the Grove lock marina caught my eye. We had rung them a few times last week but just got the answerphone so I had written them off as a possibility of a place to stay as noone returned my call. However as luck would have it today the phone was answered and we were told there was one available visitor mooring for a couple of weeks. So by 3pm we were tucked into our new home and hooked up to electricity, with ready supplies of water, wifi, showers to name a few of our ‘luxuries’ which we used to take for granted! We could even park our car if we had it with us! The shops at Leighton Buzzard are not too far to walk too apparently  – it will be a toss up between how much we think we can carry and how often we want to brave the supermarket!

The washing machine is in the marina office which is only manned at the moment 3 days a week so I am not hopeful I will get a look in as one of our chatty neighbours told me there is always a queue! I used the machine on our boat last week and was amazed to find the shortest wash took over 2 and a half hours! Either I find a laundrette or I do the washing by hand. So tonight saw me fill the bathtub with a load of clothes and then wash them as best I could. That was once I had removed the fruit and veg and temporarily found them a new home. It really is an eye opener living in a small space!

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!

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Snow was forecast today but actually when we ventured out on a walk along the towpath it felt warmer than yesterday. We wanted to find a suitable mooring for tomorrow after we have completed the locks through Marsworth and out the other side. We met a delightful man walking beside the last lock we visited and he fell to talking to us. He was definitely someone with a positive outlook on life, always trying to see the glass half full. He used to be a football coach and then a mentor for troubled youngsters in London. He found that work heartbreaking as so often those he helped to recover from drug abuse, relapsed. A few years ago a friend who was a fishmonger asked for his help. As a result of that he now has a passion for fish and healthy eating. If I heard him correctly, there are 10 master fishmongers in Britain and he is aiming to be number 11! Moving to live with his mum near here and help care for her, he is learning all the aspects of the job that he needs to know before he opens his own shop. Such is his passion for supplying fresh fish he gave me his number and said to ring him whenever I wanted advice on a recipe or how to cook a particular fish. As R admitted that I wasn’t a great fan of oily fish such as mackerel, he suggested how to cook it in such a way I would be hooked (excuse the pun!). Finely slice a fennel bulb and lay in a dish topped with the mackerel, fresh as can be, juice of a blood orange and fresh parsley. Bake. Sounds delicious and simple so worth a punt! We parted on the best of terms and he heartened us by saying our chat had made his day! Reminded me how important it is to be ready to stop and listen when someone obviously wants to talk.

The walk through Marsworth was very picturesque with the Tring reservoirs to one side with lots of ducks and swans parading around. In a way quite a bleak, but beautiful landscape. A couple of pubs, a few houses but not much else of note. Nowhere to buy any provisions that I came across. I think it must be rather strange to live in a village that largely consists of a canal bisecting its centre with a scattering of 7 random locks close together!

Am in the midst of a P D James whodunit so tucked myself under the duvet this afternoon and read a few chapters. Then my regular Friday Zoom with friends, followed by another phonecard with a good friend and it was time for gin, supper and an episode of Vera followed by a feelgood, fairly soppy film (based on a true story). Then a relatively early night ready to tackle the locks tomorrow. At least I know halfway along there is a takeaway selling delicious hot chocolate. The one I had today wasn’t quite hot enough so I just need to try another one tomorrow asking for it extra hot, just to confirm the taste was the best chocolate drink I have had in a while!

There was an article in one of the newspapers this week entitled 21 ways to treat yourself in lockdown and I realised many of them they were indulgences I was already enjoying: proper coffee; comfy shoes (I even have on the boat a pair of the exact recommended birkenstock slippers – I bought them a couple of years back from the birkenstock seconds retail outlet in Bad Honnef where my sister in law lives!): long baths (well the one on the boat isn’t so long!); coats of many colours; shopping around for bargains; candles; cocktails; fresh flowers (slightly cumbersome on a boat with little space!); a project (I suppose that’s one way of looking at this narrowboat trip); a bookclub (bible study is nearest equivalent) and biscuits. I was so pleased to see them on the list. I have rediscovered the pleasure of a good biscuit with my morning coffee or afternoon tea. A guilty pleasure that I have not enjoyed for many a year. My waistline may not thank me but it is such a comforting treat.

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