Author: Mary

A very quiet start to the new year, awaking to a rather white sky and a few drizzles of rain. Wrapping up warmly we had a lovely one on one walk with K and S, who live near to Berko. K gave us a pot of her freshly made marmalade which will be a real breakfast treat! The boat is moored next to a park where there are quite a few walkers with small children. Its so funny to see toddlers peering in the window and the smiles when they realise someone is inside who is waving at them!

Walking along the towpath yesterday, whilst R was operating a lockgate, was an elderly lady with a plastic bag and a grabber stick. She told R she frequently goes along collecting the rubbish. It reminded me that we have a grabber stick on board too and really should put it to such good use when on a towpath walk. I think ours is 20 years old – a by product of R’s accident which we never parted with.

We had a great chat in the morning with a couple walking by who we were moored next to for a few days at our last visit to Berko. Transpires he is a craftsman who does various refits on the insides of narrowboats. Seeing photos of his work was inspirational as he has had some really clever ideas of how to best use the space available. Having lived on a boat for a couple of months I would love to design my own interior with a place for everything and everything in its place! What I think would be really clever is part of the roof that could be raised up, like you see in VW campervans! R wouldn’t have to keep banging his head or stooping his back. Of course it could prove a bit of a disaster if you forgot to lower it before going under a bridge. I remember my sister-in-law telling me a story of being on the Norfolk broads with her family and they forgot to lower a sail before preceeding under a bridge!

A couple of Zoom calls, a delicious bottle of bubbles (present from my niece who’s husband knows his wines!) as we didn’t have any last night (gin being the tipple!) and an episode of Vera! Living it up in Berko aka 2021!!

A cold and crisp start to the day, frost lingering on boat and ground as we head for our first lock. 7 locks later finds us heading into Berkhamsted and waving at boaters who we met when we were here for a month on lockdown. It is all comfortingly familiar and yet slightly depressing at the same time. It feels like we are no further on in regaining some sense of normality than we were in early November. We decide to moor near to the train station partly because we look out onto a park. That involves a further two locks which we go through after a water fill up and use of the Elsan at Old Mill, where we moored up for a month previously. It’s the one I complained about to the CRT as we left Berko and they said they would fix. Sure enough, I found it in perfect working order! Arriving at our new mooring and immediately hearing the trains reminded me that we have forgotten their frequency and the noise they make, but no doubt we will quickly become accustomed.

As we had copious hot water i enjoyed a relaxing bath and was in my pj’s by 6pm! Think that’s a first for New Year’s eve! Meanwhile R christened his new bow tie and it’s commented on at the Zoom get together we have with some long standing friends. A few Zooms later, a thrown together bowl of pasta and a large gin accompanied by a film that finished bang on midnight, saw in the quietest new year in nearly 34 years of marriage! Contrast it to 20 years ago when there were lots of big celebrations to see in the new millennium – only seems like yesterday! One thing there was in common – the quantity of fireworks. In Berko tonight they went on and on although from our boat all you could hear were the bangs. Didn’t actually see one in the sky!

• 

• 

Wishing everyone a blessed and peaceful new year.

Well, we were blessed with the weather today! Not as bitterly raw as yesterday and plenty of blue sky dotted with clouds. I am realising that the daily weather reports are essential for our decision making as to how far we move the boat if at all. Our new best friend, Ra, a delightful and chatty companion along the way shared most of the locks with us today. So in sync did we become, we actually entered two of the locks tethered together! We had had to wait as another boat, a widebeam, went up the lock before us (twice) and as space was tight, the safest option both times was to wait parallel to Ra’s boat, tied together. The boats get rocked around by the flow of water coming out of the lock when it is emptying and this can prove to be a bit hairy if there is also a weir close by as I found to my cost today. R was operating a lock and I was waiting, holding the boat by its midrope, at the canalside. However the force of the water was pulling our boat away from me and I had to exert a lot of strength, on a muddy bank, to prevent it drifting not only in to the middle of the canal (a potential disaster with neither of us aboard) but also into the boat moored just a little further downstream. A passing jogger came to the rescue as he helped me pull the boat safely to the side in the nick of time! I am discovering muscles I never knew I had! All became well with the world when Ra appeared, having left his boat briefly as we were waiting for the lock to clear, to buy four jam donuts. Not an indulgence I normally allow myself but today it was just what I needed. All that jammy loveliness!

• 

• 

We moored outside the Fishery Cafe, which I mentioned in an earlier blog as a great place for al fresco dining up until 3pm! Having got my hopes up for an excellent takeaway coffee in the morning, they were dashed by a lady telling me the cafe is closed until the end of January!

Oh the joys of boating life! One end of the boat is damp with condensation, leading to a damp mattress, whilst at the other end, we heard a loud rattle this evening and saw that several tiles have come away from the bulkhead, probably caused by the heat of the stove over many years leading to dried out tiling glue. Am hoping it won’t prevent us being able to use the stove as I am not sure the radiators alone are effective enough for 1°temperatures! These are just the normal challenges of being on a narrowboat mid winter!

We met the street entertainer, P, again as his widebeams are moored nearby. He had spent a lonely couple of days over Christmas and had hoped for some good TV but said he was disappointed, so I think it was not a very festive time for him. When we last met he was hopeful that he had managed to sell one of his widebeams but that has fallen through and he is not able to find another purchaser until we come out of T4 . All very worrying for him. As Ra’s boat was moored next to P’s I introduced them to one another and went off in search of a postbox. I saw they were still nattering (socially distanced!) on my return 15 minutes later. Good to know I haven’t lost my networking skills amidst these restrictive times!

• 

• 

It really feels like we are heading home to Berkhamsted.  We keep seeing people we know! After our initial lock this morning we planned to stop for water and were slightly dismayed to find two boats at the waterpoint. However only one was filling up. The other was waiting to go down once we had brought our boat up in the lock. And it transpired they were the lovely young couple who had sorted my mobile battery charging issue. They were heading slowly back towards London having enjoyed Christmas in Cassiobury Park at Watford. The water fillup took a while – some taps seem much slower than others but there were lots of people to chat to.  As we went towards Cassiobury Park we were amazed at how many people were out walking. Unsurprising really considering the  restrictions but it did seem very busy. I was glad to be on the boat! However it was a bit disconcerting having such a large audience watching our every move handling the locks! Coming out of one lock we saw a long queue of people by a boat called Mollys Cafe. She was obviously doing a roaring trade. Had the queue not been so long we would have joined it. We have heard of Mollys Cafe and its an idea close to my heart,  offering refreshments from the boat.

We were just about to do  our final lock of the day when we saw a boat close behind us so we waited for him to share the lock. As he was happy to then do another couple of locks with us I persuaded R this was a good idea as we would have an extra pair of hands to help. So passing under the M25 we got as far as Kings Langley and moored for the night. Although I would like to travel on with him tomorrow R is not so sure because he travels at quite a lick and we might not enjoy going as fast and feeling under pressure. I expect he will be up and gone anyway far earlier than us!

• 

• 

• 

• 

Awaking to a cold misty morning, eerily beautiful,  we started on our way from the outskirts of Harefield, pleasantly surprised that it was not raining. The fingers got very cold though! The rest of me was warm as could be. I certainly have perfected the layered look! We covered five locks, most in our favour and I even got a 10/10 for manoeuvring into one of them perfectly  according to R! The lock at Croxley Moor was so difficult to open I had visions of a night’s stay!! A kind man on the towpath offered to help R push the lockgate open but even with the two of them and me assisting with the bow of the boat, it took three attempts before it budged!

At Rickmansworth (potty alert) R emptied the Elsan. We have a new policy – whenever the opportunity arises to empty the cassette  we will do so. It’s the same with filling up with water – never miss an opportunity of a water tap. As we are needing to  cover more distance per day than we did leisurely going south, we will encounter the water points more frequently.  With the engine running at length plenty of hot water is on hand by the end of the day – we were able to enjoy a really deep (short!) bath this afternoon which warmed us up after all the bracing cold air! As R never normally has a bath more than 4″ deep you can imagine my indulgence did not go unnoticed! I also have a new laundry policy in line with my idea of keeping us as isolated as possible whilst travelling through T4. We can’t really use the washing machine whilst we still have a leak in the water system but if I hand-wash we can still spin the clothes and then dry with the heat of the stove and the radiators.  So tonight saw me washing clothes in the bath, which I will spindry when the engine is running tomorrow and then dry in the evening over the stove. What a palaver! To avoid the supermarkets I also bought enough fresh provisions to last us the week most of which are being stored in the bath – it certainly is multifunctional!

We are beginning to see the challenges of winter cruising, one of them being the copious condensation buildup inside. Luckily we have a choice of beds because the mattress in the bedroom is damp all along the side touching the cabin wall. We need to pull it away from the wall but that in turn narrows the walkway. A roll of black sacks has come in very useful acting as a barrier but I don’t think it will solve the problem!

We’ve had some enjoyable towpath encounters in the past couple of days. An old boy we had chatted to when last moored near Harefield happened to be on the towpath when we had to move the boat in the dark. He was able to direct me to the best place to moor and thus helped me feel confident about steering the boat blind. A couple passing us on bikes stopped to say hallo – we had been neighbours in Berkhamsted! Another old boatman was the guy who had instructed me about the importance of the midrope on the boat and when I recognised him we had a great chat. He’d had a lovely Christmas being fed the best Christmas Dinner he had had in years by a lady who was a chef, on the boat next to his. Unfortunately, he told me, he’d managed somehow to upset her daughter. Something to do with the fact he’d been enjoying a few too many festive tipples prior to his dinner! Today, as we were moored up a couple passing just stopped to chat and we had a lengthy conversation which I found really encouraging. They were enthused by what we were doing as it transpired they wanted to do something along similar lines (but not on a narrowboat). When I asked if they would like prayer for anything S said close to his heart were the self employed. He really feels they have been over looked in all the Covid handouts from the government and many are struggling both financially and mentally.

As a final aside, I am so grateful to the young man who sorted out my mobile charging issues. No longer afeared of running low on battery, I was able to enjoy a couple of hours of trickster bridge with my younger daughter and 2 good friends. A blessing indeed!

• 

• 

Decision time. We are allowed to move our boat to keep our essential services, such as water, waste disposal and heat supplied. Did we want to go further into London or retreat back in the direction we have come? In the end we decided to beat a retreat so our first task today was to turn the boat around and for that we had two options. Either travel an hour to Bull’s Bridge Junction where we could turn the boat and travel an hour back to where we started and then continue on. Or, reverse the boat approximately 100 yds into the Slough Arm where we could then turn around. Of course that sounds the quickest, simplest solution. Except that I think even that probably took the best part of an hour with a few extreme stress points! Suffice to say the start of the day was not the most harmonious! However once we were facing in the right direction, with the sun on our back and a clear blue sky, tensions dissolved and we had a beautiful journey along the canal navigating a few locks, which seem to be easier when you are going in the upward direction. We even stopped at a lock Cafe previously visited to make sure the gluhwein wine was still as good! The only other touch point of the day came when we thought we were tucked in for the night. Darkness had fallen and the wide towpath we were moored along was suddenly illuminated by a pair of headlights! It transpired the towpath was also a narrow lane and a takeaway food delivery was trying to get past our mooring pins! Sensing that this might not be the only vehicle wanting access we decided to move the boat. However our options were limited. Behind us was a weir so the current of water was not in our favour. The next suitable mooring was a couple of hundred yards further down the canal, which I had to navigate in almost total darkness, whilst R shone a torch along the towpath as additional guidance to the boat’s one headlamp. All a bit unsettling at the time but eventually R hammered in the second set of mooring pins muttering that at least it wasn’t raining! The physical effort required at times is exhausting and slightly hazardous as you don’t want to be hitting your thumb instead of the pin! A well earned Guinness for his efforts put R into a better humour and at least retiring to bed tonight we have not got the storm raging that rocked us to sleep last night.

• 

• 

• 

• 

A lazy start to the day and then a walk in the park nearest to H’s flat. I was unaware how many decent sized parks there are in South London. A really splendid view of the City awaited us at the top of the rise.  H, who had been wanting a game of charades, was delighted to find a little pixie like circle of individual benches where we sat and  played a few rounds! Made it feel a bit like Christmas al fresco!

En route back to the narrowboat our uber took in the central London Christmas lights which I thought were amazing! Especially the houseman Berkeley Square. Added to the fact we could get out of the car and safely take pictures from the middle of the road!

• 

• 

• 

• 

Arriving back at the boat we were pleased to see it all intact and none the worse for our absence.  I had awoken in the night thinking we hadn’t turned off the water before we left and had visions of burst pipes but R was one ahead of me so my sleepless night need not have been!