June started with a pleasant cruise, we had nephew James and his lovely wife Hannah on board for the 6-hour 10-mile, 12-lock cruise. It’s always good to have a young energetic crew when you have 12 locks to navigate.
We have decided to stay put till time to move directly to Islington on the 9th of June. The mooring is quiet and peaceful despite being just a couple of yards from a bridge-type structure that attracts some very strange folk, some are easy to understand, they are simply p**s heads looking for a quiet place to sup their Strongbow, but others were not so easy to understand. The same two chaps arrived early afternoon several times per week and sat on the structure for several hours at a time before disappearing, my first thought was that they were drug dealers and some people did stop and seemed to make an exchange before continuing on their way but the stoppers were so infrequent that if drugs were being dealt very little money seemed to be made. Despite the strange comings and goings, the mooring felt safe.
View from where the p**s heads and others do their thing.
Hannah and James left for home the day after we arrived. It had been great seeing them for a few days and hope they can crew for us again at some time in the future.
The trip to Islington was 14 miles and included 12 locks, we were not looking forward to it so we were very pleased when pal Mark rang to say he would join us for the trip to Islington and stay for the time we were there.
The day of the Islington cruise dawned bright and sunny. We set off before breakfast (we had bacon sarnies on the move) not, particularly early, but we were looking at an eight-hour cruise and wanted to get to our mooring in the afternoon, not the evening.
Some of the locks on the Lee Navigation were horrible. One, in particular, Ponders End Lock was a nightmare. There were no lock landings as such, on the non-towpath side, the level of the land, edged with railings, was some way above the water level. The towpath side also had no lock landing, as you approached what should have been the landing was a timber structure at water level that I was able to leap over (nearly breaking my neck in the process) but there was nowhere for the boat. An undercurrent prevented Mark from hovering in front of the lock. He bounced his way along the moored boats, the owner of one telling him “not to worry, it happens all the time”.
Eventually, we turned back onto a muddy ditch The Hertford Union Canal and wonder of wonders there was a boat in the first lock, it had not seen us in time to make it, in water usage terms, economic to let us join them but they waited for us at the next lock and we shared the last two locks of this, at just one mile long, the shortest canal on the system, with them we then turned onto the Regents Canal.
The next four locks were quickly dealt with despite the increasing numbers of gongoozlers all, it seemed, with narrowboat questions.
At the last lock, a chap on a narrowboat parked on the exit lock landing had asked me where we were planning to moor when I said “mooring no 2 just beyond the next bridge”, he replied, “Oh you won’t get in there, there is a woman with a wide beam been clogging that mooring for weeks, she claims she has engine problems but I’ve heard her engine running as sweet as a nut”.
Armed with these bullets I walked to our booked mooring which was indeed occupied by a large wide beam boat, banged on the side and when the young lady appeared, like a total twerp, I gave her both barrels loaded with the other guy's bullets.
She was so apologetic explaining that her engine had indeed broken down, it would run sweetly for a couple of minutes then overheat and threaten to seize solid. She also informed me that the C&RT were aware of the situation and that we should moor alongside her. The moral is don’t fire bullets that someone, with an unknown agenda, has made.
We had a splendid few days at Islington, with a very pleasant Turkish meal from a fish and chip boat and a visit from sister Janice and B-i-L Peter, they were coming in the morning for lunch and we had planned to go out to a local Wetherspoons for dinner and a few drinks in the evening. We were surprised when James and Hannah phoned, Hannah's mum and dad were visiting and could they bring them to see the boat. Unfortunately, Sue was suffering her first cold in three years so by late afternoon she was so exhausted that all our visitors left so she could rest.
After six sunny and enjoyable days, we left Islington. We were taking Mark as far as the St Pancras Lock from where a short walk would take him to St Pancras station and his train to Leicester while we carried on to Grand Junction Arms Visitor Moorings where we stopped for the night.
Grand Junction Arms
It seemed wrong to stop outside the Grand Junction Arms and not eat there so we went for dinner. The first shock was getting asked for £9.30 in payment for a pint of bitter and a half-pint of lemonade. Wow!! A landlord's justification is that people are not going into pubs in sufficient quantity to make them viable so the prices must reflect that. The counter to that argument is that because it was so expensive I did without my usual pint before the meal, another with the meal and a third after the meal limiting it to just the one. The meal was reasonably good however we had been sitting a while (sipping slowly my very expensive pint) when the waiter came with our mains, we asked if it was usual to serve mains before starters, he apologised took the mains away and returned a short while later with our starters. They were OK but not great. It was soon time for the mains to reappear and to be fair they had been replaced and not just kept in a hot box for a half-hour. Sue’s grilled rainbow trout fillet, pink fir potatoes, fennel and mustard cream turned into grilled salmon pink fir potatoes, fennel and mussel cream which was not even on the menu however my grilled dry-aged lamb chops with wild garlic pesto, peas, broad beans and Cornish new potatoes were delicious.
One other moan while we are in a moaning mood - I have never been required to pay for a meal in a restaurant before eating. If we were local it would be the first and last visit.
The strangest thing about today’s cruise (Thursday 16th) was that none of the guide books or websites we use for cruising information included the service point under railway bridge no 11a, we happened to notice the C&RT Services sign as we passed and had to reverse up the canal to access it. It was as well we did see it as our water tank was empty and our toilet tanks were full.
We stopped that night in a place that we thought would be quiet until we noticed that a yard behind the fence on the other side of the canal had a crane working that every time the driver selected reverse emitted a loud, screechy peeeeep, peeeeep. He seemed to spend most of his working day in reverse. Still, the yard closed at 6.00 pm and didn't reopen until 7.00 am.
We had a very short cruising day today (Friday 17th) after just 1.1/2 hours we saw a spot that we thought would make for a very pleasant stay and it was. Although close to a school and with groups of schoolchildren passing regularly the children were generally preadolescent and very pleasant.
We were making for Uxbridge where we had arranged for Ship Shape Stove Services to do a full service of our Morsø Squirrel Stove, as the mooring we were hoping to use was not near shops, launderettes etc., we stopped on the visitor moorings at Yiewsley. There was a large Tesco Superstore that backed directly onto the canal but why go to a supermarket when the town was full of independent stores selling all manner of superb foodstuffs? Of particular interest to us was the Yiewsley Fresh Fish shop, what a fabulous fishmonger, a great variety of wonderful fresh fish we tried Red Bream a fish eaten in Japan, where it is a highly prized luxury food, Taiwan and Korea where it is the most commonly eaten fish. The fishmonger prepared it by cleaning the fish and chopping it into 1 cm thick steaks which Sue coated in cornflour and fried. It was delicious, so delicious we went back a couple of days later and bought some more - fabulous! While here we also bought another type of fish but can’t remember its name but whatever it was it was delicious.
With every amenity so close by this was such a convenient place to stop we contacted Ship Shape and changed the service location from Uxbridge to here.
The stove service engineer appeared as promised and started by spending an age cleaning the flue, paying particular attention to removing some hard chunks of scale caused he said by the flue not drawing properly a problem caused by installing the smoke hood when the stove was fitted which prevented the flue reaching a temperature sufficient to prevent tar condensing on the flue pipe and building up as hard scale. After cleaning the flue he turned his attention to the inside of the stove itself and found that the bottom plate had been fitted upside down, which as this plate is unlikely to have been removed since the original installation says a great deal about the original installation engineer.
A week later with every bit of laundry laundered, the food cupboards full to bursting we left Yiewsley and moved just 4 miles further up the canal to just above Denham Deep Lock where we stayed for two days exploring a small section of the Colne Valley Regional Park, billed “ . . . as the first substantial taste of the countryside to the west of London . . . “ and is well worth a visit. We moored at another park the following day, Cassiobury Park, the largest public park in Watford.
Cassiobury Park near the visitor centre
Our last mooring in June did not start as a happy experience as we went past a line of moored boats I asked a chap if there were moorings between here and The Three Horseshoes at Winkwell Swing Bridge, “ . . . nothing beyond the one behind you . . . “ came the answer. We wanted to eat in The Three Horseshoes that night so swallowing hard I reversed the boat up the canal until we were able to access the only mooring. We didn’t know until later that there was a mooring directly outside the pub.
The evening meal was very acceptable, our starters were calamari for me and fried onion rings for Sue, followed by mains of fish and chips. A good end to a good month.
Our miles travelled in June was 65 miles in 45.5 hours transiting 57 locks at an average speed of 1.49 mph making our totals for the year 377 miles in 334 hours transiting 290 locks and 5 swing bridges, giving an average speed for the year of 1.12 mph.