Sonning - the Bear on a Boat.: A Big Boating Adventure

In my last post about last year's boat journey, I wrote about the marvellous time we Bears had at the Cavalcade Festival at Little Venice, which was over a year ago! Now I am going to tell you about the adventure we had after the festival, when Polar and Grizzly took our boat, Uplander II, or "Uppie", along the Regents Canal through London and out to the Lee Navigation.

None of us had been that way before. We went through a short tunnel at Maida Vale and passed some very fancy houses and through the middle of London Zoo before coming to three big locks at Camden. There was an awkward breeze across these and Polar found it very difficult to get the bottom gates closed ready to fill the lock for our boat, so she drafted in passers-by to help!

We carried on through to St Pancras, where there was another tricky lock, but that was all we had to do that day, as Polar had booked us a mooring at the London Canal Museum that night. We Bears wanted to go in to explore, especially as we could see some small bears inside, but we were too late as it was closed for the day.

In the morning we set off again, heading east into the Islington Tunnel, which is not quite wide enough for two boats to pass, so you have to make sure there is no other boat coming your way when you go in! As we came out, another boat pulled away a little in front of us, which had been moored on the eco-moorings, where there are planters full of wildflowers and small trees.

The only crew member was a young woman and she, Grizzly and Polar worked through the next lock together. She was very nimble and would probably have managed the locks more quickly on her own than with our "help", but she did not mind us joining her. Her name was Milly and she gave Polar some helpful tips about boating on the Lee, including that the locks were bigger than on the canals and often rather hard work, plus some hints about where we might manage to moor. She was heading the same way, so we worked the three locks on the Hertford Union Canal together as well.

The last lock let us out onto the wide and busy Lee Navigation, which leads down to the Thames at Limehouse, passing the site of the 2012 Olympic Games. But we turned upstream, towards Tottenham. All was going well until we reached the first lock and found that someone had moored a big widebeam boat on the lock moorings, but luckily there was a man on a fuel boat approaching as well, who was less nervous than Polar about jumping off the roof of his boat to get ashore, and helped us through with him. We Bears decided that we liked London boating people, as they were kind and co-operative!

After another big lock we moored where Milly had suggested, at Tottenham Marshes, and our humans had a very good night's sleep after such a busy day. Carrying on up the Navigation, we passed through more locks, including one at Enfield. They were all different - some were fully manual, some had electrically operated gates and some had a mixture of the two!

The land around us was quite open and flat at first, with lots of electricity pylons, but gradually became more like proper countryside. After working through another lock, we reached the junction with the River Stort and found a place to stop for the night, near a boat whose owner was growing pretty tulips on the roof to sell in local markets.

Polar and Grizzly made us a big bowl of porridge before we set off the next morning. Our journey up the Stort was a proper river cruise, winding through the pretty countryside towards Royston and on to Sawbridgeworth.

It looked like there were super moorings here, in front of some new flats, as there were neat mooring bollards all along the riverside. But there were also big signs that said "No Mooring"! How very annoying! Instead of using the nice bollards, our poor humans had to make the best job they could mooring against a grassy bank on the other side, so we could go ashore for dinner and some beer

We found there were some overgrown moorings a little further up the river in the morning, but they wouldn't have been much better than where we stopped.

We completed our journey along the Stort on the same day that King Charles was being crowned so, while other people were having street parties and watching the TV, we were right out in the country cruising along a beautiful, tranquil river. We wondered if the King wished he was having a nice, quiet day like us.

We were pleased to find some good moorings at Bishops Stortford with space for Uppie, so Polar and Grizzly took us exploring. We liked the park and the mound where the castle used to be, but our favourite place was a big shop called "Cooper's of Stortford" which sold just about everything - except the one thing we were looking for, which was some new braces for Grizzly's trousers. And we met a friend of Polar's for lunch the following day, which rounded off a very nice time there.