Saturday 21st April
Today we have travelled another 4 miles and 9 locks from Winkwell, through Hemel Hempstead to King’s Langley. We stopped off at the sanitary station just before Lock 66 and while we were there Barbara went to the very handily placed Sainsbury’s. The whole trip took 4 hours.
Poor old George has cut his back foot right near one of his claws. I don’t know how he did that or when but he has started hobbling about and is being a bit difficult about letting me touch it. This afternoon I had to quickly dunk his foot in a bowl of TCP and squirt the Surolan on from a distance! For a big dog who usually feels no pain elsewhere he is such a wimp about his feet! Actually I think he is developing ‘doggy alzheimer’s’, he keeps wandering about then just standing there like he’s forgotten what he is doing. His eye sight is really deteriorating now as well and he can hardly see, especially at night, bless him, he’s a right old wreck!
Ken and I walked in to King’s Langley which you could call a large village. There are quite a lot of shops including – Boots, Spar, a butchers, Post Office, a model shop, fish and chip shop, two or three hairdressers/beauty parlours, 2 barbers (one open on Sundays) and various posh gift and clothes shops. There are also 2 pubs, a local type one, The Saracen’s Head and a more upmarket type one, The Rose and Crown.
We arrived back at the boat just in time to see the ‘fashion icons’ going past, forwards this time and on their side of the canal. None of them glanced up as they went by, they must have recognised our boat though, they were very close to it yesterday!
Tomorrow we are moving a bit closer to Rickmansworth.
