From - Sun Jul 04 11:29:38 1999 Path: reader2.news.rcn.net!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!logbridge.uoregon.edu!remarQ73!supernews.com!remarQ.com!remarQ69!gxsn.com!not-for-mail From: "Trevor Pavitt" Newsgroups: uk.rec.waterways Subject: Lady Elgar heads South - Trip Report (16 -final) Date: Fri, 2 Jul 1999 18:31:46 +0100 Organization: GXSN Lines: 74 Message-ID: <7liskr$p45$1@gxsn.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: 195.147.215.49 X-Trace: 930936283 1NNUCNF1GD731C393C gxsn.com X-Complaints-To: abuse@gxsn.com X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.5 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Xref: reader2.news.rcn.net uk.rec.waterways:90984 The Last Leg: Our extra crew member joined us at Gayton Junction. Although she lives on a boat Karen does not get much opportunity to do any actual boating so she was delighted to spend a week with us and, by the end, was handling the boat like an expert. Saturday started at 6.30 am, when we were woken by a very noisy hire boat going past crewed (?) by a group of young men who had clearly been looking upon the grape when it was crimson (presumably an all night session?). After passing through the Blissworth Tunnel we shared the Stoke Bruerne locks with a novice crew (their first lock in fact) who were plainly very apprehensive; we were able to leave them at the bottom considerably more confidant and *almost* convinced that it actually was *fun*! Halfway down we passed the aforementioned hire boat, hastily moored and with the crew now completely comatose on the bank. Moored on the visitor moorings below the lock at Cosgrove and were very surprised when we woke in the morning to find a fisherman about two feet from our rear door and the entire mooring pegged for a fishing match. It being the first Sunday of the season we had contemplated staying here but now decided to keep moving and spent our day negotiating the wall-to-wall roach poles of Milton Keynes. I always thought visitor *moorings* were reserved for boats – how naive can you get! Uneventful travel on the broad waters of the Grand Union in lovely weather took us ever southwards, interrupted only by massive bunkering at Leighton Buzzard (Tesco’s) and Apsley (Sainsbury’s). We moored successively at Stoke Hammond, Seabrook, Cowroast, Winkwell, Cassiobury Park and Denham. On our final morning we spotted a familiar boat in front of us – it was “Penlan”, our companion from the Soar to Gayton. We hooted but got no response so I telephoned them. Me: “Hi Steve” Steve: “Trevor! How are you – *Where* are you? Me: “About fifty yards behind you!” Needless to say we both stopped and said our farewells over a pint of Steve’ s homebrew. It is said that, although all airfields look the same from the air, every homecoming wartime bomber crew instantly recognized its own and greeted it with relief. So it is with us; the Slough Arm may be nothing to write home about but we always have a warm feeling of familiarity as we turn into it (possibly enhanced on this occasion by Steve Kenyon’s homebrew). Friends waved and shouted greetings as we made our stately way up the mooring to our berth. Our jaunt was over. We covered 845 miles with 508 locks in 407 hours (2.7 lock/mph by my method). We thoroughly enjoyed having time to linger in the North of England and found everybody up there incredibly friendly and helpful (almost like North America but without the relentless cordiality). We moored in Manchester and Leeds and passed through Blackburn, Burnley, Leicester etc without a hint of trouble. The lock-keepers on the Trent were a model of courtesy and helpfulness – unlike several we have met on the Thames! Altogether a wonderful cruise. As a schoolboy studying English Rural History I was fired by William Cobbett ’s “Rural Rides”- I reckon that a trip by canal boat is the nearest we can come nowadays to repeating Cobbett’s exploits. It's certainly the best way of experiencing what I am old-fashioned enough to believe is still the *real* England. If you have been – thanks for reading my twaddle. Pip, pip Trevor Nb "Lady Elgar"