Thursday 19th April
It’s been a bit of a day today, we finally left the bottom of the canal at Cowroast and travelled 5.5 miles and 15 locks to Winkwell, which is on the outskirts of Hemel Hempstead. Including a water stop this journey took 5.5 hours. It rained on and off (more on than off) all day but fortunately the winds were light.
We started trying to moor up after 11 locks but it was the same old story – the canal was too shallow and we couldn’t get any where near the bank when we tried! So we ended up doing another mile and 4 more locks until we found somewhere suitable. As it is we are not right in to the bank but we are near enough!
Having walked the whole way because the distance between the locks was such that it was not really necessary to get back on the boat between them, this probably equates to about 7 miles altogether with all the toing and froing on the locks and not having taken advantage of the water stop to get myself a sandwich, by the time we had moored up I was STARVING!
Earlier, much earlier, I had got a whiff of chips cooking at one of the many canalside pubs we passed and from that moment on I just HAD to have chips for my dinner! However, we hadn’t got any chips on board, so after we moored up we went in search of a shop to buy some. I said if we couldn’t get any I would have to have my dinner in the pub! We went to the Spar shop at a garage in Boxmoor but they didn’t have any chips so we had to go in the Harvester, which was practically next door and have a meal.
When we got back to the boat I went to sleep, bless!
