It's Jo's birthday, like by the time you're watching this it won't be Jo's
birthday anymore, but but today is Jo's birthday, so we're doing a kind of
pleasant cruise down towards Uxbridge. I said I wanted to cruise. Yeah. Well we
want to visit the elsan and do the water as usual. But there is also the... Hanging
monkey. The tourist attraction of the area. I mean, I just found it
on the map and I was like, what the heck is a hanging monkey. There's like all these
five stars.You know, five, five start rating, 'Quit
monkeying about folks, can we have a serious review that gives some degree of
gravitas to Rickmansworth most significant monkey, a real cultural icon,
a Rickmansworth must-see'. 'It's not often you get to see a hanging monkey in such
an idyllic setting' my favourite one; 'probably one of the best giant hanging
monkeys in the Rickmansworth are.
It's raininng
So we've just got to the first lock and my windlass is on board, and the lock is set against
us, and the gates open, So, I can't really do anything until I get my windlass, and its
raining. But I think this is the first vlog, in I don't know how many, where we havent
complained about the heat, so I'm not going to complain about the rain.
Its really, really light, but I best go and get my windlass.
So someone has chopped this tree down.
Luckily there is enough room to get past.
So that was exciting, we're at the
Springwell lock, long-term moorings, and a boat had come loose. And was streached
all the way across the canal. Now if you remember last time this happened. Michael
ended up with a bit of mooring pin in his leg, and he went to A&E so, luckily one of the
neighbors on the mooring helped us get it back, which involved Michael towing
it for a little bit. And we've just carried on a little bit and look, I don't know if you can see but.
it's the famous hanging monkey. Such and exciting morning.
And there we have it, the Rickmansworth flying monkey, or sorry, Rickmansworth hanging monkey, best
hanging monkey in all of Rickmansworth.
No idea!
Just coming out of the Springwell lock, which is, so leaking like a sieve that,
the boat that passed us, while we were trying to fix the problem with the boat
that had come loose, had just come through that lock, and moved off, like, less than five
minutes later we arrived at the lock and it's already half drained. So, really big hole in the bottom of that thing. Lots of water coming out.
Moving along, Heading towards, I think it's called Copper Mill Lock.
About a mile to go for there,
When you think about it, its kind of amazing how many different types and designs of narrowboat there are on the canal. I mean they just come in
all different, sort of, shapes and sizes some of which are a little bit more
unusual than others. A little bit unpredictable. That one.
Also, sometimes when
driving down the canal, you have to look at the map, and you notice something like,
it says there's a sewage works beside you, and that's fine, and then there's
this pipe bridge, that is, leading to the sewage works, and you get the feeling,
just before you drive under, that maybe you shouldn't be eating anything, just
case something drips, off the pipe bridge.
We are at Black Jack's Lock, at black Jacks Mill, Cute little bed and breakfast right there.
And the sun's coming out
So we've just been to... what was it called? The Bear on the Barge? The Bear on the Barge. The Bear on the Barge? And had... The Bear
on the Barge Pub. And had some lunch, we were just going for a drink but we ended up having lunch, coz they had...
Halloumi and Pizza. I had halloumi, he had pizza.
Because they had a ten pound lunch offer with a drink. Two course.
Which came to 22 pounds. And then we got back to the lock, and the water was pretty much up,
but the bottom paddle was open. There were two boats that had left, and they'd
left the bottom paddle open, so I went to manually close the bottom paddle
because I figured that they were leaving it open, so that the, umm, you know, water
would just drain like some people do for locks and some of the locks say to
do that, so I was like okay, I'll close the bottom paddle, well Jo gets the windlass
and everything and can do the top paddles, and then a guy comes up from down below,
who apparently, is trying to catch up with the boats that are in front of us,
He's in ever such a rush, so instead of letting the lock fill, the last foot
to get up, so we go down, well he did, he did actually, he came to the front and
started opening the front, so it was raising, and then his boat showed up
at the back, before I got to my boat, so he was like 'oh maybe we should go first'
So he started dropping it, even though it only had about 6 inches to go then. So he dropped the lock with no
water in it, when he could have dropped it with us in it. Yeah, after raising it.
It's just annoying, well it's mainly annoying for the water. My
heads cut off. Yeah I'm not worried about... like I'm not in a rush, I just think,
Its bad manners actually, its what I think. To mother earth.
So yeah, Denham Deep Lock, 16 feet, ish, deep, umm, lost the page on the book. It's the deepest lock on the Grand Union.
It holds no terror for me, because it's nowhere near as deep as Bath Deep Lock
at least not from the inside. And err, and yet, George does not want to be on the boat, and Jo
does not want to be on the boat. And so it is me, the
intrepid explorer, who is currently waiting for Jo to open that thing, all
the way and for this lock to drain 16 feet.
Any minute now we should be 6 feet deep
maybe six-foot-one
we've made it to Uxbridge Lock. And if anyone wants to live in a lock keepers cottage, this one is for sale.
Just raising the water so that we can go in.
So we've just come into Uxbridge, 2010 Nicholson's guide describes Uxbridge
thusly 'The Battle of Britain was directed by
the late Air Marshal Lord Dowding, from the RAF headquarters in Uxbridge, the
town is perhaps, noteworthy for its selection of modern and futuristic
buildings in a variety of competing styles.'
That's one of them.
It's been a really nice day. We say that on every video. I know but its
like, no there's been some crappy ones. Theres been some, well, poopy ones. But there's like, overall, the actual trip,
right down until the very last second, was really pleasant, and pretty, and as we're
moving into London, I'm consistently like, wow you know, we're getting so close,
and the big city hasn't begun, and then we came down the last lock, and like
there's the big city, it's begun! Yeah, but I bet it goes away again. Probably, at this
point we're considering whether or not to go down the Slough Arm, which I just
read has been described in 2010 as, basically, like, rapidly silting over, not
really of any use, use it or lose it, and I think the thing was difficult and
disappointing. Because the canal plan website says that, to get to
the end of the Slough and back might take like an hour and a half. An hour and a half. Its not long. Each way.
And it was like, ah okay we could just quickly sort of tick that off, and then I
read the thing and it's like. Maybe not. Lots of industrial and semi industrial
stuff, and a poem about how nice it would be to bomb Slough to the,
you know, flatten it. Im not really sure if its as bad as it seems to have been made out
but... Yeah. Wow, the doppler effect is really funny with bad music. And then we need to
go down to Brentford, and then back up to do the Regents. Yeah, yeah so there's
plenty of options it's like, do we go this way, do we go this way, you know. But ultimately
we're going east. Yeah Funny old day, we met that boat that
was blocking the canal, and that man... who ran out to.. Yeah, like I thought it was a
neighbough, because I said to him 'oh you know whose boat it is?' And he kind of
laughed and went yeah. And I'm like, well is it your boat. Because he was ever so helpful and pulled it all back and...
I wasn't sure how you and I would do it, but the fact that he jumped up ment you
could stay on shore and grab the lead rope, he could jump on, crawl across, and
he tied up the the rope from the back of the boat, onto the front of our boat, so I
could pull us backwards to kind of move the boat over. And it didn't take long. And it wasn't a
a wide beam, but it wasn't a narrow beam, it was like a middle beam. Yeah, it was like a 10
or 12 foot wide one. And um, so we just got him back, we hadn't tied him off
No, we've got him in position and me over to the side out of the way.
Yeah. Just in time for this boat to just whizz past. I've never seen a boat going so fast.
Like I swear... Ant they both had this look on their face like, why are you in our way. Yeah. We are
going that way, and you seem to be blocking the canal. We're are hanging on to this boat,
and wide beams are heavier I've learnt, than narrow beams. Oh yeah. And they whizzed past. And we were struggling to
stop it, like banging into the boat in front and the boat behind.
And you are getting pushed onto the cill. We were all just like. 'Do you want to slow down?' We ended up stopping for lunch.
Well we ended up stopping for a drink and then we had lunch which was a bonus.
Really nice. Birthday lunch. And then I got a bit grumpy because the other
boat stole our water. To be fair he didn't know how quick we were going, and
his boat was showing up, it sort of made some sense.
But you could tell he felt bad for doing it, because he was like rushing
around like mad. Yeah. And saying, he said to me 'we'll just get this other boat
in, and then we'll have the gates open for you' and I thought you've forgotten the
small matter of raising the water. And if you hadn't stolen the water in
the first place we'd be in there, and dropped down and bla, bla, bla.
But, I didn't say that, I was just like... Zen on her birthday. Actually, its been fairly low traffic
there's been a lot of boats moored. Yeah, and do you know what I have noticed? What's that? The variety of boats is increasing, like.
there's more... Oh Yeah... There's more wide beams, like many, many more wide beams. There is a few
obvious sail away wide beams that are half done up. More than a few. That
seems to be a thing. Yeah, and then there's a lot of like, weird repair jobs
cuz... did you see the one that was covered in... The fencing, fencing cladding. Yeah
There was one of those covered in fencing cladding, and then there was one
that, that, somebody had done actually a very good job of the cut, and and positioning
and taping, but he'd put, its breathable pitched roof liner, and the whole, whole
boat, it's like a wood, a wood superstructure older boat like 1990s
boat, with a wood superstructure and and I guess the wood has failed, so what
they've done is covered the entire thing in this breathable liner material, and so
they've done a really nice job of cutting it up, and taping it so it looks
like it's actually metal. You know or something, except it just all says
'breathable' They haven't finished yet. No they haven't finished anything. And then the next one
behind it, is just all covered in tarps, that are done up the same way with tape
and everything. And then there was that one boat, that I have seen pictures
of on Facebook or Twitter or something, which has got like the car. Yeah. Stuck on the
back and welded. And then there was a few, I call them hoarder boats, where there's
just, you can't see any metal on the roof, it's just junk. Just so much stuff. Wood and
bicycles. There was the oddity of the hanging monkey, Rickmansworth premier
travel destination. And, and yet, it was kind of neat, and there were these boats
nearby, that we're all sort of done up in artsy ways and stuff, you know. Yeah, that was a nice
community. Yeah, and and there's... as we've passed along today, there's been lots of
very unique boats, some of which are obviously well cared for by people with
very creative personalities, you know. And we came around a corner and
there were some guys who were scraping paint off the top of their boat. Oh Yeah. With blow torch. It looked like it was on fire.
My first thought was that's a strange way to make a barbecue, like I thought he was
cooking something on the top of his boat and that seemed like a stupid thought. I
guess we're in between, like we haven't got one of the shiny boats by any means,
it's like, well you just have to look at a bit of painting it chips off. Yeah. But...
Stare at it too hard. So we're not one of the new shiny people but were
also not one of the, like, eclectic, you know, hoarder, collection, artsy boats.
we're just kind of... Yeah I've got kind of a, I worry about the word 'hoarder' because
I think of that as like people who hoard stuff inside their house who have a problem.
problem, you know, but like yeah, there are there, there is that gap between... I guess...
Like very clean, very pristine, nothing on it. Yeahh. Extremely shiny, you know might
have some in antennas and aerials and things, but basically... Functional stuff. But yeah, there's
nothing on there. If the rope is on the roof it's coiled up. And
it's always a nice coloured rope and all that sort of thing. And then you get to
the other end, and it's a garden from top to bottom, and it's full of... And the ropes are
fraying. Yeah, and it's just a very different thing. And yet, you got to kind
of be proud a both right. Like it's just an interesting community. Yeah, and the fact that two of them can
share a look and have a lovely time together, like, that's great. Anyway, we've talked for too long. We're stopping now.
So yeah, a nice birthday cruise, and now we're just gonna chill out, it's about
five o'clock. Yeah, so a couple of movies on the DVD and eventually I'll make some
dinner. As always, thanks for watching, like, click, comment, bell, hit the bells
See I remembered the thing. Well done. Also the doobly-doo. Whatever that is.
And subscribe.
No comments:
Post a Comment