Well I don't know who told me that the Aylesbury arm only takes about 5 hours to do, because it's taken me over 7 hours!
I've had quite a good day on the whole. The weather was fine and I was up at about 8:30 doing my chores: washing my bedding, filling Oothoon's water tank, emptying the loo, emptying the bins, posting a letter and more shopping. I even joined the Aylesbury Canal Society--it seemed the least I could do. Finally I set off, somewhat later than expected, at 2:30.
The journey along the Aylesbury arm was great--the weather behaved itself and there were no n'er-do-wells to trouble me. More of an issue was doing the narrow locks by myself. Although the locks are 7ft wide, so Oothoon's 6'6 width fits snugly, they have double bottom gates and a single top gate. Whereas with the double-width locks that I've had on the Grand Union so far, where you just need to open one gate to get the boat in, on these locks you need to open one (half) gate, then run around and open the other (half) gate, then run back and jump on the boat. Once you're in the lock it's the same, closing one (half) gate then running round to close the other before you can open the top paddles. Even when the lock is full, it's not straightforward, because for some reason a lot of the (full width) top gates have their balance beam on the opposite side to the towpath, meaning that you take the boat out, tie up, then run round the lock to get to the balance beam, so you can close the gate and walk over it to get back to the boat. Now I'm sure that working boats didn't do any of this, and I saw one bloke just jump from the end of one (half) gate across to the other (it's only about 4ft), but there's no way I'm doing that! Anyway, all that running around and to-ing and fro-ing makes for slow progress when you're on your own, and by the time the sun went down, I still had four locks to go.
Now I've done boating in the dark before. Indeed, at the start of my trip up the Thames last year, I took Oothoon from Battlebridge Basin to Limehouse, with about half of the journey in the dark. Except that that was in London. When it gets dark in London, there's lots of light. Even on the canal, there's quite a lot of light. But here, out in the country, when the sun goes down, it gets dark. Oothoon is fitted with two headlights, except that they're really car headlights and one stopped working after the first month, but I could see well enough with the other to do the locks.
Locks four and three are pretty standard locks, except that there are wrecks of boats moored just next to them, which makes positioning Oothoon difficult, but I got through them all right. But locks two and one are a staircase and it was vital that I set everything up and got the sequencing right, otherwise I'd have been in a pickle. I needed to make sure that the top lock was full and the bottom lock was empty, but that also meant controlling the water flow with the top gate of lock one. To make things more interesting, there aren't paddles between the locks as you might expect; instead there's a single control, off to one side, that lets water flow between the chambers. Anyway I took my time and was very methodical, and it was a wonderful feeling to have Oothoon rise out of the depths of the last lock, like a boaty version of a Mighty Wurlitzer with all lights blazing.
Mooring at Marsworth was more of a problem. The visitor moorings appeared to be full, so I continued along the canal until I saw a gap. I'd just stopped and pulled the boat into the bank, when along came a man with a torch, wearing only blue underpants. He explained that this was a private mooring and that the towpath was on the other side (fair enough--I had no idea). What irritated me was that I asked whether it was okay to moor where I was and he said no, and I then said that I "just wanted somewhere to park for the night" and he immediately corrected me, explaining that it was to "moor" and that "boats 'moor', they don't 'park'". I guess he was having a complete sense of humour failure, at 9:40 at night, on his private mooring, in his blue underpants. Anyway, I apologised for troubling him and headed off along the canal.
I'm moored (not parked!) on what I believe is the towpath and I'm not in anyone's way, but I did find a mooring ring near the front of the boat, which is a bit worrying. Oh well, I'm sure I'll find out whether I've stopped in the wrong place in the morning.
Posts
