8/8/2022
Tring
I haven’t navigated these waters since before the pandemic but, even then, the locks exiting Berkhamsted towards Oxford were pretty dilapidated. Needless to say they have not improved. When I first moved onto the canals the convention was that, upon exiting a lock, one always made sure that the paddles were down. Quite soon after my arrival, about ten years ago when The Canal And River Trust took over from British Waterways, we were told that we should also close the gates upon exiting. Although the locks are designed so that one set of closed gates should be sufficient to stop the water from flowing, due to their age and decrepitude this was not alway, and now is never, the case.
Several of the locks above Berkhamsted have, for years, had signs requesting that boaters close all the gates and leave the bottom paddles open to allow the lock to drain completely and keep the pound below full. This is all fine and dandy if you’re navigating downstream – you just leave it open and move on. If you’re exiting at the top of the lock, as I was on this trip, it becomes terribly tedious. Especially if you’re a solo boater as you have to properly moor while opening the bottom gates. And it’s particularly demoralising when you’ve done that, are moving on and encounter another boat coming the other direction, who you know is about to encounter an empty lock which should have been full. It also strikes me as a terrible waste of water.
Interestingly enough, the signs used to say the reason for the request was that the locks were old and badly leaking, but due to be maintained soon. On this trip I noticed that one of locks had a new sign – it seems they’re atually leaking due to acts of vandalism. …These vandals are really getting about.
Also interestingly, recently CaRT sent out a circular about water resources saying that they were currently spending ‘many millions carrying out essential repairs on reservoirs’, no mention of locks, ‘to comply with the stringent law around reservoirs…’ Frankly, it sounds to me like a last ditch effort as they’ve realised that they’re fifteen year government contract comes to an end in five years time and rumours are rife that, due to a decade of failing to carry out these essential, or any other, major repairs over they last decade they’ve already been receiving the grants, along with various other endowments and lucrative contracts, their chances continuing beyond June 2027 are somewhere between a snowball and a snowflake’s chance in hell. I’d say this is something to celebrate and look forward to, but that’s how everyone felt when CaRT took over from BW which turned out to be leaping from the frying pan into the crucible of an ironworks.
Okay. Rant over and on with the voyage – of which this leg was, leaky locks aside, another summer delight. It was a longer day than the trip from Apsley to Berkhamsted. I went through Tring and moored in Bulbourne, for two reasons. Firstly, because Tring is not a very convenient place to moor. The moorings are in a valley surrounded by trees, so mobile phone reception is very poor, if available at all, and solar panels are deprived of any direct light. And although the train station is nearby the town itself is about a mile from the canal.
The second reason was that the stretch of canal from Cowroast lock to Bulbourne, in which Tring is about the middle, is one of my favourite runs. It’s about two and a half miles, and a straight run as Cowroast is the last lock before Bulbourne. The first half is wide, open countryside. Lots of farmland and big skies. But the stretch from Tring to Bulbourne is dramatically different. As I mentioned earlier it’s deep in a valley and surrounded by foliage, which comes together high above you. This time of year as a lush, green tunnel. You can almost taste the freshness and feel the extra oxygen in the air. It’s a beautifully tranquil stretch, particularly if you move as slowly as possible (which we call tick-over) and, as I was, are fortunate enough to have the canal to yourself.
When I arrived in Bulbourne the mooring Gods, once again, were with me and I secured a space on rings at the bottom of, oh happy days, yet another pub: The Grand Junction. The beer garden is enormous, on a shallow hillside with the canal at the bottom. It also has an outside bar with a patio and more formal dining area, although the menu is limited and, for what they’re serving, expensive even in this financial climate. On the other hand the outdoor dining area is set up to resemble a VIP area, has proper linen napkins and serves wine in carafes, so that may well justify the cost to some. …Not many, but some. They also stock plenty of finely kept ales and beers, of course. An excellent IPA from Meantime and, naturally, at least one from their most local beer maker – The Tring Brewery, which I walked down to visit the following day.
Taps! (…For display purposes only, the real stuff is kept around the back)
They’re a small brewery with an impressively large selection of real ales, all available in their shop, most of which have reasonably low alcohol content ranging, on the taps pictured, from 3.6 to 4.2 vol. Visitors are welcome and, indeed, encouraged to sample any and all on offer. There’s also a farm shop next door selling all sorts of local produce and, on your way into the compound, you can say hello to the chickens and ducks. Don’t forget to thank them for the eggs you’re about to purchase.
Farm Shop
I only spent two nights in Bulbourne before tackling The Marsworth Flight, which consists of seven locks in quick succession. It’s alway something I look forward to with some trepidation: it can be quite tricky and very time consuming on your own. Not just because of the locks. The flight covers a wide, open plateau and the winds tend to get rather gusty.
The plateau also hosts a reservoir that supplies the much of The Grand Union’s water. It’s also where the locks change direction. In other words, when you approach from the south heading north as I did, where all the previous locks back towards London you are moving up hill (locking up) from Marsworth you start moving back downhill (locking down). I always think this is a bit trickier as a solo boater. Apart from the fact that you have to be weary of catching your stern on the cill, a shelf at the back of the lock when hiding downstream, it’s also a little more work to get your boat out of the lock when it’s below you.
The Cill
Thankfully, there was a team of volunteer lock keepers on duty. I say duty, they have no duty or obligation to show up and put in the work they do. They’re just throroughtly decent people who spend their free time helping us boaters through locks. And thank God for them on this day because the locks on The Marsworth Flight are, you’ve guessed it, a sheer and utter disgrace. One of them was under repair – it had been reported broken back in the winter but this was they day they decided to get to work. This only caused a minor delay, although I was told that if I had arrived earlier the wait would have been a lot longer. Then, as I exited one of the locks, a volunteer suddenly announce that one of its paddles had just given up the ghost. Which, for some reason, we all found rather hilarious. I suspect it was a laugh or cry reaction.
Even with the minor delay, thanks to the volunteers I was through the flight in record time, which meant I was able to make a lot more progress than expected. Although my destination was Leighton Buzzard I had planned to split the journey overnight about halfway. But thanks to the head start at Marsworth I ended up completing it in one stint. Including the flight, it was a total of 18 locks and took a little over nine and a half hours. Probably the longest day’s cruise I’ve had in many a year, and definitely the most fun and satisfying. Blue skiesm fluffy clouds and sunshine on a perfectly still day, winding through open fields of arable farmland, much of which had been freshly harvested, and the occasional field of cattle or sheep
Once again, I also appeared to have the waters almost entirely to myself, which is strange. I am beginning to wonder where all the summer cruisers are. In eleven summers on the canal I don’t think I’ve seen so few boats moving around in early August.