If you have been following my blog, you will know that we Boating Bears are on an adventure to London - and beyond! In my last post, I took us as far as the filmset in the countryside, south of Milton Keynes. This post is all about what happened on our way into central London and Little Venice.
We passed the film set as we were climbing up into the Chiltern Hills. To get to the summit at Tring, you have to go up a flight of locks at Marsworth which are next to some big reservoirs. I remembered coming down these locks in 2017, on my way to Staffordshire after being found beside the Thames.
In fact, we had found wild damsons near here and made jam! But it is too early in the year for damsons at the moment, and there would have been no time for jam-making. It was sunny, calm weather, however, which meant bears on the roof for a great view of the surrounding countryside.
Hanley Bear cheered when he saw a boat from the yard at Longport, where we had our hull blacked, at the summit of the flight.
Having reached the summit pound at Tring, we then had to start the long journey down again towards the Thames valley. The first lock is at Cowroast. Here, we met a surprisingly tame heron, who seemed very keen that Mrs Chrissie got his best side in her photos!
I lost count of the number of locks we went through to get from there to Berkhamstead, where it was time to do some shopping and moor for the evening. This is a very pretty little town, which has lots of interesting canalside buildings and a ruined castle.Polar and Mr Alan were opening and closing lock gates all the next day too, as we came down through more locks to Apsley, then had another lock-filled day getting us to moorings just south of Rickmansworth.
We bears stayed in the cratch, just to be on the safe side, while our doggie friends tried to help their humans with the locks and with steering, though I do not know if their efforts were always appreciated!
It was still fairly chilly, even on the brighter days, so we looked forward to porridge to start our day!
Endon Bear kept an eye on the flowers on the roof, dead-heading the auriculas to keep them flowering, and making sure that the sarracenias had plenty of rain water - which they did, because we were having regular rain!There were often boats coming up in the locks as we were waiting to go down. We always looked out for interesting, historic boats and particularly liked this one, although I don't think we have ever tried Ovaltine!
Some of the locks have pretty little stencils on the beams. Polar said some others had notices stapled to them about a bad man who was pretending to be a boat mechanic but was stealing money from people. That made us growl!
We had a short cruise one day so we could stop for a look around a very pretty village called Denham. The doggies got an extra-long walk that day, and Hanley Bear got to test Grizzly's beer, to make sure it was good enough for him.
The last few locks took us onto a long pound through new housing developments and modern factories to Bull's Bridge Junction, where the Paddington Arm turns off of the main line to Brentford. Even I hadn't been that way before, and we were all excited to be travelling along a waterway that shares its name with a famous bear.
We saw more and more boats that people live in all the time along this section. Polar says this is because it is very, very expensive to rent or buy a house or flat in London, and many people find living on a boat gives them a nicer life. Some of the boats are very big, like Dutch Barges or widebeam narrow boats, and lots of them have very striking decoration on them.
One of our favourites was painted to look like a Tube train! Because they don't move very much, they also end up being used as nesting sites by coots and ducks!
We had made better progress than Mr Alan expected, and were going to arrive too early at Little Venice if we weren't careful, so Mrs Chrissie called around to see if there were any marinas we could stop in for a couple of days. Luckily, there was a nice one called Willowtree, near Southall, which was doing a discount for Cavalcade boaters, so we checked in for a couple of nights.
It was like having a mini-holiday, as the humans didn't have to work any locks or go anywhere, and there was a nice little restaurant on site too, and a country park for us to explore just next to it.
Hanley Bear started teaching Huddlesford to play chequers. Hanley is very competitive, and always has to be the red team. He is good at the game and usually wins - he even beats Polar occasionally!
When it was time to set off, we found ourselves cruising right into central London. One day, we saw how some modern apartment blocks are made from lots of pre-assembled modules fitted together, like Lego! We didn't think we would want to live so high above the ground!
Lots of the waterfront developments were designed with wharf-style features, like mooring rings or bollards, but they were too high for most boats to use, and had big "no mooring" signs too, which made us sad for the people who live in boats. One development even had an old narrowboat in a pool of water set into the landscaping!
One thing I though was very exciting was the big aqueduct that takes the canal over the North Circular main road. I always find aqueducts amazing, and a little bit scary.
But that meant we were nearly at our destination. Suddenly, the big blocks had all disappeared and we had low-rise flat beside us, and very grand houses across the water.
We had arrived in Little Venice, and our adventures in London were about to begin!
