Sunday 15th April
A trip of 4 and a half miles and 9 locks today has brought us to the top of the locks at Great Seabrook, just round the corner is Cook’s Wharf, Pitstone. This took around 3 and a half hours. Why have we stopped so soon? Well, it is a nice mooring for a start and in light of the fact that the locks at Marsworth (39 – 45) are on a time restriction due to lack of water on the Tring Summit, so we will not be able to start them until 10 am tomorrow, as good a place as any to stop. Besides, as it has been pretty windy today Barbara and I have had to walk nearly all the way here, we only got back on the boats once, so the boys didn’t have to pick us up and drop us off, therefore we needed a rest by the time we got here!
I was disappointed by the Whipsnade White Lion. No this is not a pub (as Ken thought when I mentioned it to him) but a chalk lion, cut into the hills in 1935 and is over 480 ft long. I thought I would be able to see it easily like the White Horses in Wiltshire and that bloke with the big willy, The Cerne Abbas Giant. It should have been visible from Slapton (great name!) and Horton. I could just about make it out in the distance but only because I was really looking for it. Pictures of it on the internet do not resemble what I could see today anyway!
Ken took a wrong turn when looking for the pub later and I had to walk another mile to Cheddington to The Old Swan instead a few hundred yards to The Duke of Wellington at Cook’s Wharf! The Old Swan is a nice enough pub but expensive – Bangers and Mash £13-50. Alright Wild Boar and Pheasant sausages and caramelised onion mash, but still essentially bangers and mash! And the Adnam’s was £3-50 a pint too, dearer than The Swan in Southwold.
Tomorrow, after Marsworth locks, I’m not sure what the plan is at the moment.
