There was a bit of light rain first thing but it was dry by the time we set off about 9. All the locks round here have to be left empty, which means they all need turning before we can use them. After the first two locks, Adrian wielded the key of power to open the Winkwell Swing Bridge, but it was only at the last moment that a car turned up to be held up.
There’s a busy boat yard next to the following lock, although parts of it seem more like a boat graveyard.
Just around the corner is a railway bridge carrying the West Coast Mainline. It’s another which looks very similar to the one at Blisworth.
We carried on through Boxmoor Top Lock (where we could leave the gate open for an approaching boat) and Fishery Lock, and moored above Boxmoor Lock, where we last stopped in 2014.
Finally a mooring where the whole boat can get to the side, and we’re not crunching on something under the water! The only annoyance is that the hedge is to the south, so even though it’s been a sunny afternoon there’s been very little solar. The other side of the hedge is land belonging to the Box Moor Trust. It’s one of the reasons we stopped here, so Mac has somewhere nice to explore and run about. We just have to be a bit careful of the livestock, which in this case is Belted Galloway cattle.
This afternoon I went off to research whether there’s enough in Hemel Hempstead for a magazine article. The post-war main shopping street isn’t much to write home about, but parallel to it are the Water Gardens, a series of gardens bordering the River Gade (which actually joins the canal just below the lock).
Further north I found the Charter Tower, the only remaining part of a big house. There’s a myth that Henry VIII handed the town charter through the upstairs window, but it can’t be true because it wasn’t built then! It might have been a previous version of the tower. Beyond it is a walled garden.
I also went to look at the church, which dates from the 1100s.
The High Street of the original town is also nice, although it’s being completely re-paved at the moment.
To get there, I had to go past one of Hemel Helpstead’s more notorious features, the so called Magic Roundabout — a roundabout with six mini roundabouts at the junctions. It makes you glad to arrive by boat and on foot.
2 miles, 5 locks. (76 miles, 92 locks)