Not our best week!!!

Do you like our back garden???

I apologise for the big gap I my blogging but we have had quite a traumatic week. You will understand by the time I finish this blog.

First of all everything started fine and off we cruised down to Leighton Buzzard for a wander round the shops and get a ‘civilization’ fix’. The canal was right in the middle of the town, which is always nice, as carrying shopping can be quite a pain.

Anyway, here things started to go a bit wrong. I sat down to do my last blog and by the time I finished my arm was feeling really painful. Then I started to feel cold and sick. The arm got bigger, hotter and more painful. I spent the next two days virtually asleep while the rest of our mates did all the locks and carried on life as normal. Then I emerged feeling a lot better and suffering cabin fever so couldn’t wait to see people and have a drink. By this time we were moored at Cowroast which has a pub famed for its Thai cuisine. Ken and I sampled this famous grub and boy they were right it was delicious. Just the thing to build my strength back up. I am happy to say I am feeling quite well again. We have no idea what caused the problem, but I wouldn’t wish it on anyone.

Thai food and 'Side Pocket for a Toad'!!!

We woke next day to constant rain, so donned our waterproofs and wellies ready for the ensuing 10 locks. It was hard and miserable work. We are three boats traveling which is not ideal, but we have quite a good routine going on. Anyhow, the routine got messed up somehow and Ken and I ended up in a lock on our own trailing behind the others. I was on the boat in the lock and Ken was doing the gates, which I cannot do at the moment because of the arm. All went t**ts up and the boat got caught and started to go down!! I screamed at Ken who closed the bottom paddles and opened the top ones quick enough to re-float the boat, but not before it had tipped nearly 45 degrees to one side. The inside of the boat looked like we had been burgled!! I only lost the lid to one coffee canister, amazing! The experience has left us both very shaken.

The day unfortunately only got worse. We had a message to say Dave Mason, Ken’s best friend had died, no detail or anything. As he had not been ill we were speculating all night what might have happened. All was confirmed the following day with details. Ken went on a bender! I think eight or nine pints later we carried him back to the boat and he thankfully slept till next morning.

The water gypsies!!

The next couple of days had been pretty hard work, lots and lots of locks and long days. At least the sun has been shining, which it is not today. The rain is pouring and we don’t plan to move anywhere.


We are moored now on the outskirts of London at a little place called Croxley (Watford suburb). There is a good pub if we get too bored which we ate at last night, seemed wrong not to when they were doing two meals for £8.95. The food was really good too.

Under the M25!!

M25 from the lock!!

There have been some lovely stretches of canal here, beautiful green tunnels of trees, pretty lock cottages and a lot of houses as we are now getting nearer to highly populated areas.


We have had some laughs. Ken left a paddle up which meant the lock would not empty, duh!!!!! John caught his centre rope in his prop, which stopped his engine dead and he had to sort that out, duh!!! And bless her Trish thought she had a launderette all lined up, got all her washing ready, and guess what, went past the bloomin thing!! You can’t turn round in a canal!!!