A Few Less Locks Today

Tuesday 3 August 2010.
Winkwell to Cassiobury Park.
8 Miles 16 Locks.

Today we started at the same time as Narrowboat Tarka, the boat that we had shared the last 8 of yesterdays locks with, we were happy to travel with them as we had a good routine at the locks and were about the same speed.

At Lock 68 we found that a paddle on one of the bottom gates was up so I went to close it, I got it halfway down but it wouldn't go any further, we wound it up again and had a prod around with poles and boat hooks, we could feel something, I thought it was a plastic bucket, but we could not shift it, eventually I managed to force the paddle down, I had to hold it down as it was trying to spring back up, we filled the lock and got both boats in, we then opened both bottom gate paddles and the force of the water pushed the obstruction through, we could hardly believe what came out, a plastic water tank, it was pulled out onto the bank.

This was wedged under the gate paddle

We passed through Hemel Hempstead before pulling over for lunch, we managed to moor at the third attempt due to the edge being too shallow.

At Kings Langley there is the site of the old Ovaltine Factory which originally had it's own Dairy and egg farms behind it on the other side of the rail tracks, they also ran there own fleet of Narrowboats, the factory opened in 1913 and closed in 2002 when production was transferred to Switzerland,  the site was sold for housing but as the front of the building was listed it was retained and the new apartment's built behind it.

The Apartment's viewed from the Canal, click here link to see the other side

After Lunch we carried on under the M25 bridge and  through Abbots Langley, the Canal winds through some tight 90 degree bends as it passes through "The Grove" before we reached the final 2 Locks of today's cruise, we went through these locks and attempted to moor for the night but we found the edges very shallow again and we were almost at the next lock before we got close enough to moor up.

You know that you are close to London when you see the M25

The miles are flying by.

We had planned a rest day tomorrow after doing 50 wide Locks since Sunday morning  but may now drop down the next Lock to hopefully find the water a bit deeper at the edge and get the TV working.