Onwards to Rickmansworth

(Boat Sickle - posted by Alan)

Trevor with "Corona" at Apsley

What a difference a day makes!  After yesterday's appalling weather, we awoke to what look set to be another excellent day.  Once again after last night's festivities at a local pub, we saw no urgency to get going.  Needless to say the legendary Trevor Maggs was quickly past on his way to Rickmansworth with his working boat "Corona".  Trevor is only mildly younger than his boat built in the mid 1930's, but still gives us "youngsters" more than a run for our money at an age where most people would long have given up trying to single hand a 72 foot long deep draughted narrow boat.

[Footnote:  Someone has suggested Trevor is older than his boat, and that he is approaching 82 this year - which is confusing me, as I felt sure Trevor had told me that despite someone suggesting it in an article previously, he was a bit younger than Corona - now I really am not sure!]

Hunton Bridge

Like yesterday, we did not have much to travel by way of mileage, but this part of the Grand Union only tends to have about an average of half a mile between locks, so even a short days boating will typically have quite a lot of locks.

Hunton Bridge Bottom Lock

Also, like yesterday, most of the locks we came to were empty, so set against us, and all needing to be filled before we could work through them.  Where it differed from yesterday, when we hadn't really seen other boats moving at all, today quite a few were, but mostly headed the same way as us, hence not helping in leaving any locks in our favour.  We eventually caught another boat, and worked several locks sharing with them, before they also dropped out. After that we caught a slow moving wide beam boat on its way to the same place as us, leaving us with a longish wait at many of them.

Cassiobury Locks

However slowish progress was not really an issue, as we had plenty of time, and we arrived in good time to find our mooring, and start to sort ourselves out.

Waiting for slower boats to clear Common Moor lock.

We were going to have a friend camping on "Sickle's" deck, some of "Sickle's" ballast conveniently acting as "tent pegs", so once Barry had arrived, a few trial attempts were made at erecting his compact tent, before the preffered method for further nights was arrived at.


 

Historic boats already forming up at Rickmansworth

Possibly one of the largest errors of the day was the amount of Indian food that Cath went and ordered at a local restaurant that does take-away.  Suffice it to say we were never going to run out, and Barry's dog, Riko, had ample portions of left-over waiting for him for breakfast!

Apsley to Rickmansworth
Miles: 8.4, Locks: 16
Total Miles: 36.6, Locks: 61