Tuesday 17th April
The weather was really grim when we got up, raining quite heavily, but it had been promised that it would clear by about 10 am. As it happened it did start to clear at 10-30 am, by which time we had all decided to stay here. This was a good move because later there were several pretty lively hail storms.
Actually, moving is not something we can do a lot of at the moment because the water level has dropped since we arrived and we are now sitting on the bottom, listing at a jaunty angle to starboard! To try to remedy this, this afternoon we did, with much effort, push the boat out into deeper water. We were, at one time, about 5 ft from the bank at the back and 3 ft from the bank at the front and for a while we levelled off. However, we have since drifted back toward the bank a bit and become beached once more.
It’s not too bad, apart from the fact that I fall over every time I get up (that could be the red wine though!), the doors stay open when you want them shut and vice versa and George needs his gang plank to get on and off.
As I type a chap has just come up lock 47 (at this time of night) and drained some more water out of our pound so we are now at an even steeper angle! He was going to go up lock 46, which we are below, to deliver a boat to the marina. Lock 46 is one of the ones on the time restriction so it is locked up. And in any case the marina is closed because there is not enough water in the canal to get in and out of it! Why did he not know about these things?
We were going to stop here again tomorrow and go in to Hemel Hempstead on the bus but may be we will have to move, if we can get off the bottom!
