Back at Rickmansworth....

.....after a rainy stop at Cassiobury Park.

Well hasn’t the weather changed, I stayed the weekend at Hunton Bridge and did wander down to the ‘village’, nothing to write about though, the Pub did not look appealing and the convenience store was small but handy, although they did charge me 80p for using my debit card which I think is out of order, but when you have no cash on you what else can you do.

Saturday the weather was showers, I looked out of the cabin window to see an amazing rainbow but by the time I had got my camera ready it had faded which was a shame.

On Monday I did a short cruise down to Cassiobury Park for a change of scenery, it was mostly uneventful but the pound between the two Hunton Bridge locks (72 and 73) was extremely low, down about 18”, I could see the top gates were open on the next lock so decided I could get there without running any water down, I did, but it was very slow and I scraped along the bottom even keeping to the centre of the channel, I should have run some H2O down!

Just a cruise picture

Arriving at the first of the two Cassiobury Park locks (75) there was already a wide beam waiting to go down and a narrowboat coming up, so I held station mid channel and waited, once the narrow had passed me and the wide had gone in I moved up to the lock landing and gave them a hand, you can see the second lock and another boat was coming up so I waited for him rather than turn the lock and waste water, I locked him through then entered myself, I was just about to close the top gates when a boat appeared wanting to go down so I waited for them as well, they were surprised to see me still there as I had passed by them some time earlier but I explained what had taken so long and then we shared that lock and the next two before I moored up opposite Cassiobury Park.

Mooring

It rained heavily Tuesday and was not very pleasant yesterday either but I did manage to get a couple of trips to Morrisons avoiding the rain on the mile walk each way.

This morning I cast off just before 9am, first job was to fill the water tank, so I pulled in just before Cassiobury Bridge lock (78) and that took best part of an hour, the tank was down to about 250ltrs so that was about 650ltrs added with a slowish tap.

Water tank filling.

No problems with the next lock and I was on my way again.

'Underground' train rail bridge

At Cassiobury Wharf I passed fuel boat Hyperion, I think this may be their base, I had seen them there when I walked to Morrison’s the day before , unless there are on a break.

Along the very straight section at Croxley where there were plenty of spaces but not for me to use today.

Do you ever feel like sometimes you just can’t get all your ducks in a row?

Approaching this boat I wondered what the box floating alongside was.

But on passing it looked like a duck house, maybe those six white ones’ home.

Lot Mead lock (80) was slow to empty as one paddle was out of action, I had a couple of gongoozlers watching me intently but they never spoke to me.

Batchworth lock was the last for me today and a stop at the service point afterwards to empty the cassette and dispose of the rubbish before moving off to find a mooring, loads of room so I moored well before the large Tesco, having moored opposite it a few times I know the lights stay on all night and can be quite bright disturbing sleep.

Current Mooring:

Totals this post: 6 miles : 10 locks