Berkhamsted Top Lock to Hunton Bridge. 9 miles, 19 locks. 10am to 6.30pm, with a stop at Sainsbury's, Nash Mills. Weather beautiful to start with, if chilly. Cruised until dark, and spent almost an hour trying to decide at which moment to stop.
I shared the first seven locks, down to Bourne End, with Arabia, a beautiful Roger Fuller boat with Kelvin engine, all owned and steered by a guy called Sean. He's a solo liveaboard local govt worker in London who hates being tied down to a marina and moves up and down the Grand Union Canal constantly, between Ricky and Stoke Bruerne, shuttling every few days from locality to neighbourhood, town to town.
One of the advantages of the Grand Union for London-lovers is that the canal shadows the railway in this stretch. Wherever there's a train station, there's a stretch of canal nearby, where you and your boat can tarry for a few days.
I asked Sean about liveaboards and moorings, and the current argument about continuous cruising. He was quick to echo the popular line: "The problem is not with continuous cruising, but with continuous mooring". In other words, it's boaters who stay in one place and hog the plum moorings.
In practical terms, I suspect that's not the main problem. I reckon it's crusties and scruffies and near-tramps, living aboard rotting tubs that are unlicensed and look disgusting and uncared-for. These rodney boats are simply - well, simply irritating.
But it's true, there are boats lurking around that one suspects don't move on and don't pay their way. For instance, in Hemel Hempstead at the BQ wharfside where the Roses Lime Juice Cordial factory used to be, there was a gaggle of liveaboard boats which looks suspiciously like they'd set up home. You don't run a canalside generator if you've just stopped to pick up some screws and tools, do you?
Down at Nash Mills I was chatting to a man with a bark-mad alsatian. "Don't worry about him, I've rescued him from a bad home; he's not used to strangers" (said the dog). I crouched down and offered my hand, and we were friends in a moment. The man lived aboard a 50ft at the new Nash Mills marina, a splendid development. 179/month, it costs him. I asked how overbooked the moorings are. Not at all, he said - there are spare places! This is indeed an unusual situation. Moorings in the commuting corridor to London are hard to come by. Perhaps it's the high cost that keeps spaces open at Nash Mills.
The majestic M25 viaduct beyond Nash Mills is almost like a gateway to London. It felt to me the way any of the old gates of London - Aldgate, Aldersgate, Bishopsgate, Cripplegate, Ludgate, Moorgate, Newgate - must have felt to a traveller of old. Centuries on, the bounds of the city have grown, and as I passed underneath I knew I still had thirty miles to go to my destination in Little Venice.
The modern gate to London is the single, massive ring of concrete that is the M25, and here, in Betjeman's 'Metroland' I realised
...Oh no, not again. The curse of the Mac strikes again (gosh, how I hate this darn computer and can't wait to get back to PC-land), and I've just lost a whole stream of thought about tying up at Hunton Bridge, exploring the village, and finding that the busiest and most interesting pub in the village is the old Kings Lodge, now run by Kamal Chaudhury and also known as Masala House and doing a thriving trade in curry cuisine. Sign of the times, etc.
Well, it's too late now - I'm not going to rewrite it; you'll just have to wonder.
Comments