Apsley to Cassiobury Park.

Travelled 5.3 miles, worked 11 locks in a time of 3 hours 35 minutes.

A wet old start to the day, I managed to walk Paddy in the dry, but no sooner we got back on the boat, the heavens began to open. We were going to set off, so jobs had to be done and one of them was to empty the toilet cassette and get rid of a bag of fire ash, so I got the trolle y out of the hold, piled it up with rubbish and the toilet cassette and headed off to the sanity station. The rain was now lashing it down, so when I got back to the boat we decided to hold on. After the deluge of rain we decided to set off at 9.55am behind the Hillingdon Narrowboat Association boats which had a group of children on board.

We left Apsley Lock and The Paper Mill and the rain began to fall again, at first it was gentle, but in no time at all it got very heavy.

The Hillingdon boats pulled over, probably for breakfast, so we went on.

By the time we reached the Hunton Bridge pair of locks I was soaked all the way through, but as Keith tells people “Our skin is waterproof, it is our clothes which are not” and as I was not cold it really did not bother me. Unfortunately due to the weather there are not many photographs today. We met a couple of other boats on the move.

Cassiobury locks and it was still raining.  The puddles on the towpath were growing by the minute and my trousers were getting wetter by the second. Having done the second of the two locks, I was beginning to get chilled, so as there was plenty of room to moor up below the bottom lock, and plenty of deep water, we stopped, the time was 1.30pm and both of us needed something to eat and a warm up. Moored up and doors closed to the elements, I lit the back cabin stove, so I can dry all our wet clothing and made us some toasted hot cross buns with coffee. Nicely warmed up, the TV went on to watch the first F1 GP from Australia.

Last night we had a lovely time celebrating with family, and friends of Keith’s eldest sister and her husband Chas, it was their Golden Wedding Anniversary with a grand party held at their youngest son’s school in Apsley, where he is caretaker, which is rather handy seen as we were moored in Apsley. We had a wonderful evening catching up with all the family.