Hanley Bear and I were hoping for a last game of snowballs today but, when we looked out of the kitchen window, we saw it was raining and making the snow all mushy. Our human guardians have told us to stay indoors, so I am writing another episode of my Boat Bear travel memoire.
Once Uplander II had reached the summit pound at Tring, to continue our journey we had to go down a lot of locks near a village called Marsworth. It's always best to share big locks if you can and, this time, we were sharing with a very cheerful group of people on a day boat.
I stayed safely indoors and watched from my special hammock as we made our way down to Marsworth. The towpath was busy with people, fishing, walking and picnicking, as there are big reservoirs and very pretty countryside around there. When we got to the bottom of the flight of locks, the people on the day boat had to work all the way up them again to take their boat back.
Grizzly explained that we were going on to a town called Aylesbury. 'There's an arm of the canal that goes there, which we would like to explore,' he told me. 'There are sixteen locks on it, but they are only narrow ones, like we have around Stoke, so they are much quicker and easier to work through.'
'The top two are what we call a staircase,' Polar added. 'The bottom gates of the top lock are the top gates of the second.'
This sounded very interesting. Polar explained we had to make sure the bottom lock was empty, with the paddles closed, as when we emptied the top lock to lower Uppie down, the water would fill the bottom one. I thought I might be able to help with the locks gates if the locks were small ones, but they were still far too big for a small bear to push and pull, so I sat in the cratch to watch. The top lock was only just wide enough for Uppie to fit into it and, sure enough, when Polar opened the bottom gates and Uppie moved forward, we found ourselves in another lock. The small locks emptied very quickly and we were soon on our way, past pretty cottages and flowery gardens, to the next one.
'How many locks are there to Aylesbury?' I said to myself. I couldn't remember what Polar and Grizzly had said. On our map, Aylesbury looked quite close but, when I counted the locks, there were sixteen of them and we had only worked through three. Some of them started filling themselves up from behind because there was a lot of water coming down from the reservoirs. It looked as though I would be having quite a late tea!
In fact, the filling-up locks weren't our biggest problem. What slowed us down were several quite shallow pounds, where we had to be careful not to run aground, and lots of big floating clumps of reeds, which Polar and Grizzly worried would get tangled around Uppie's propeller.
By the time we reached the outskirts of the town, the sun was setting and my little tummy was rumbling and, as we came into the boat basin, Grizzly had to put the headlight on to see where he was going. There seemed to be very big buildings all around us.
There were proper pontoons and mooring rings along the towpath, so we moored safely for the night.
In the morning, Polar and Grizzly went out to explore and found a lovely theatre and university buildings by the canal and an interesting old town up the hill. They also found there was a big supermarket next to the moorings where they bought fresh food for us all, including grapes and berries for me!
While they were out, I watched a big heron fishing from the pontoons. I was glad I was safely inside Uppie, as he looked big enough to eat a small bear!
After lunch, we had to go back up to Marsworth, through the reeds and leaky locks and past a boatyard where they were repairing some very, very old wooden narrowboats. Eventually, we were back at the staircase locks and out onto the Grand Union Main Line again, ready to carry on to the north.
But first, it was time for tea!
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