Cow Roast to Bulbourne, 2.5 miles, 1 lock
My plan for today was to have a look around Cow Roast, then move Oothoon to Tring so I can pop back to London tomorrow, but it got off to a bad start thanks to our old friend the rain. Turns out there's not much at Cow Roast anyway--basically a BMW dealer, a Texaco petrol station (spit!), a Mini dealer, and the Cow Roast Autorama. Oh, and a pub that does Thai food. More interesting was the interpretation board on the canal that explains that the name comes from "Cow Rest", because the area had large cattle pens that were used by the drovers en route to London from the Midlands.
Onward to Tring, which I'd naïvely thought might be vaguely important, since it has a railway station. Indeed, it's the canal's route which determined where the tracks were laid, since the railway companies saw canal freight as being easy prey ("Why have it in London in three days when you can have it there today?!") But this is the Grand Union Canal and when this was built railways hadn't been thought of, so naturally there's a road bridge at Tring and nothing else. I mean nothing, unless you count two bollards that are reserved for trip boats. Frankly I was surprised. I thought there might be a few boats moored, since there were bound to be a few people who commute every day (Euston is 40 minutes from Tring if you catch the right train), but no. Anyway, it's a dark, secluded piece of canal (Nicholson's describes it as 'heavily wooded', which sounds so romantic) and I didn't feel happy about leaving the boat by herself for a day, so I kept going to the next major bunch of boats, which turned out to be at Bulbourne.
Bulbourne is one of those places which I had considered to be 'legendary' in canal circles, because it's the home of the British Waterways works that makes wooden lock gates and the picture in Nicholson's makes it look like a real hub of narrowboat activity. Well, it might have been at one time, but I'm guessing that the craftsmen have all been sacked and lock gates are now made in Poland because the famous works have been turned into a place that makes iron garden furniture and there's little sign that BW have anything to do with the place* . Like Cow Roast, there's basically a pub and the old BW works, and that's it. It's really sad and it's made me feel completely disillusioned. What if I get to Stoke Bruerne and find that there's nowt there but the BW Waterways Museum (or the former site of, given the DEFRA cuts from last year). Maybe I need to recalibrate my expectations.
Given how wet and miserable I was feeling, I thought that the 'happy hour' at the grandly named Grand Junction Arms might cheer me up, but it translated into Ruddles at £2.50 a pint and London prices for food. The "Swiss Burger" ('Swiss' because it had, er, Mozzarella on it) was fine, but the Apple and Sultana pudding had definitely been microwaved, poorly, and certainly wasn't worth nearly a fiver.
I know I've only been at this a week, but if it's going to be like this all the time, I might as well have stayed in London.
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