Precious days on the Grand Union

15th Feb – Turned North, Uxbridge to Copper Mill Lock, Grand Union Canal, 4 miles, 4 locks
16th – Copper Mill to Batchworth, 3 miles 3 locks
17th – Turned South, Batchworth to Cowley 9 miles 7 locks
Today – Moored Cowley, Grand Union Canal

Always so wonderful when the family visit

Flat out we were last Tuesday getting NP shipshape and sawdust free.  It felt like that program on the tele, errrrrrr…. Ground Force, yes that’s the one… I knew they would arrive early-ish, and when I got a text to say they had just left…. phew.  One and a half hours left.  Time to stop and get a cuppa!

I was just rinsing out the squeegy canalside when I looked up to see Wends coming down the towpath….. “They’re here Vic”…. “Gawd tell them to gimme 5 mins” says Vic doing the final touch up in the galley!!

Ah but a brilliant three days we all had together.  A late cruise on Tuesday to the newly named Coy Carp at Copper Mill Lock for an evening meal with the kids……. don’t kids just really enjoy going out.  A cruise then on Wednesday down to Tesco at Batchworth to pick up some milk and odd bits…. AND would you believe, yet another visit to THAT wood yard… well actually I sent Vic, I just couldn’t face it again.  The waste in the bathroom is only just clearing the washing machine which is under it.  I mean only just too, the washing machine is about a quarter inch too high, we decided that we would have to use a smaller copper ‘T’ instead of the normal bulky quick fit plastic one we had.. that will give us the quarter inch.. anyway we used the services at Batchworth, backed up and turned at the winding hole (turning place wide enough to turn a 70ft narrowboat specially made in a canal).Wends, Lucy and I (or should it be ‘me’, I can never understand the Queen’s English sometimes) walked over to the Lakes late in the evening.  It was nice to have her to myself for a half hour or so

I’ll put some of the pics up as I type..

Early start on Thursday to get them all back to Uxbridge for their return home.  I hate the last day really and was hoping that NP’s new engine might think about playing up!   No chance..

There are sometimes moments that can never be forgotten while travelling the canal system… not only the above pic, but there was a classic on this particular round trip cruise.  A hire boat joined us at one lock… a hire boat in February is quite unusual.  Lovely couple obviously just decided to spend some time together doing something they had never done before!

 Vic and Danny (son in law) had gone to the lock to help a couple of lone boaters through who were travelling in the opposite direction… once the boats had exited I took NP in first followed by a very, very careful helmsman on the hire boat.  Perfect, he did it just perfectly… nice and slow, couldn’t have been better… The boys shut the gates and went to the front of the lock, one each side and lifted the paddles to fill the lock.  Nice conversation, you know how it goes.. “Do you live on your boat?” “Are you enjoying your holiday”, the usual stuff to pass the time of a lock filling.  Then it came….. “Do a lot of these locks have men working them?” “Well yes I always get the men to work them” “Oh, only I noticed that this is the only one that has men working them” I was confused…. “Err how do you mean?” “Men working the locks for you?  Are there men at other locks too?” “Ahhhhhh  actually those ‘men’ are my husband and son-in-law!”   At which point he very quickly dispatched his lady friend to help!!

One above of Wends enjoying just relaxing… Always horrid to say goodbye… but it was going to happen on Thursday.  We left as we always do when our visitors leave.  We don’t like to be in the place we have said goodbye, and moved on to Cowley for the night.

This morning we were going to move on, but we needed the services just ahead of us for the loos and for water.  Everytime we went to move another boat pulled in there… it sure was busy this morning.  So we decided to stay and try and fix our biggest problem.  We have no hot water at the moment… in fact we have had no hot water since we did the plumbing.  Gawd knows what we have done.  We really do feel that there is an airlock somewhere.. Its odd, the pipes in and out of the calorifier are hot… feeling the tank it feels hot, but there is no hot water coming out of the taps.   Post coming up I think on the newsgroup or Canal forum.  Neither Vic nor I know enough about it to fiddle!

Tomorrows plan is to get to the Laundrette at Packet Boat, then maybe travel on to Bulls Bridge and turn left into London, calling in somewhere to get some advice on the hot water problem