Stockers Lock

Today's Canal - Grand Union

The day began bright sunny but with quite a stiff breeze. It remained, as promised, that way all day until the evening. Because the forecast for Friday was quite the opposite with Storm Evert, as it was later named, threatening heavy rain and high winds, we decided to try and get as much distance on our log as possible today. We are scheduled to meet up with grand daughter Ellie in Uxbridge on Saturday and then we are booked to catch the 7.15 am tide at Brentford on Sunday morning.

We saw a Q symbol on an approach to a new canal-side development which was then explained in a Shhh this is a Quiet Zone sign beside Apsley Top Lock (sorry about the zoomed-in photo) We have not seen this specific signage before - why is it that developers or new residents (in this case the former probably as it is an incomplete site) think that they can build next to a canal and then lobby for it to stop doing what it was happily doing until the  builders turned up?

Spotted this strange shaped tree at Apsley Middle Lock.

Just before the next lock this short arm is a permanent mooring for a few rather aging boats. Alongside the canal at that point used to be Apsley Mills, another of the large paper producers that dominated the industry in this area. This arm was originally much longer and was used to load and unload canal boats - much of the paper trade was at one time carried by water.

The buildings beside the lock retain the image of the industrial heritage but are now apartments.

At Nash Mills lock we caught up with a boat that had passed earlier before we set off. They were just completing the retrial by magnet of a lock key that they had dropped in the lock. The couple had bought it a short time ago and plan to renovate it into their home whilst the retirement-cruise the canal system. They are taking it back to their baser near Harlow. To get there quickly they are starting at 5.30 and going on until 10 each evening! We shared locks for the rest of the morning.

This boat would not have made it into our Unusual Boats gallery but for the fact that it is entirely white, unlike the usual bright orange.

The lock cottage in Kings Langley has just been sold from an asking price of offers over £600,000 (makes a wide beam seem affordable!). The estate agent's details say GORGEOUS detached 'Chocolate Box' home, in a PICTURESQUE canal-side setting boasting a LARGE garden and SECURE, PRIVATE PARKING but avoid mentioning that a busy road is at one end of the property - and then crosses the canal - whilst access seems to be via the car park of a large industrial unit. The front facing the canal is just about one metre from the lock edge!

A lot of maintenance work seems to be underway on the M25 viaduct as we passed uderneath the mesh of scaffolding.

This may be the distinctive Grove Bridge (which shares with Solomon's Bridge the distinction of being the only two ornamental bridges on the Grand Union) but it comes in the middle of a long line of moored boats either side, making a fuller photo difficult to take.

Grove Mill has been converted and developed into an attractive set of apartments but looking on the internet some of them do look rather 'bijou'.

At Iron Bridge Lock in Cassiobury Park we had a good number of onlookers, mostly families with young children who were very interested in watching us go through. Mike teased them by telling them the name of the bridge and then pointed to the bridge and asking Why the name? They were keen to hear the answer but gave howls of anguish when Mike suggested they could find out on the internet when they get back home!

This long stretch of modern housing was once the site of Croxley Paper Mill - giving the name to an upmarket brand of notepaper, once a familiar name but now probably unknown to most people.

We stopped for a shopping top-up at Tesco on Frogmore Wharf just below Batchworth Lock - Andrew and Christine went to shop whilst Mike set about preparing the evening meal as we anticipated mooring up later than usual.

In the end we found a suitable mooring just below Stockers Lock, not too much further on from the supermarket. We were a bit relieved to find this space as the towpath for some distance before this was stem-to-stern moored boats, with most looking like persistent over-stayers. 

It is perhaps important to say that we observed that., although there are far more moored boats than when we were last here five years ago, the quality of the boats does seem to have been improved, especially on moorings managed by Waterside Moorings. This does suggest quite a shift in the reasons why people opt to live aboard a boat moored roughly in much the same location year round.

 10.5 Miles - 20 locks