Getting grassed

We left Watford on Wednesday morning heading for Hemel Hempstead after taking Buddy out for a final walk around Cassiobury Park.



Karen put the bread maker on and we cruised to Kings Langley through five locks before stopping for lunch with lovely fresh bread.  Once again we were really fortunate with the weather.
 

We saw this fish in one of the three locks we went through after lunch.  I'm not a fish person so no idea what it is but it was a bit longer than a twelve inch ruler.



Made me realise that I must start using our own camera rather than my old iPhone.  There were a lot of boats on the move today; more so than at the weekend for some reason.  We moored for the rest of the day at Nash Mills just south of Hemel Hempstead and walked to Apsley to have a look around.  Apsely was famous for paper mills and companies like Basildon Bond had a mill there.  One mill has been fully restored to the early Victorian era and is operational.  Unfortunately we missed the conducted tour for the day.

We mistimed things and it was really dark on the walk back and we had forgotten Buddy's night collar so had to keep him on the lead.  We stopped for a couple of drinks at the Red Lion on the way back which was the pub I tried on my own in the summer and was way up there as one of the worst pubs ever.  Anyway it wasn't so bad this time round and we were made really welcome.

We were moored just by a pipe bridge and caught this heron perched on it before our walk.


Just before we set off on Thursday morning contractors came along strimming and mowing the towpath and banks.  This makes a mess of moored boats especially when it's wet.  Too late for us to stop them so we stopped at the first lock we went through to wash the boat down.


We moored for lunch after five locks in the middle of Hemel Hempstead and then carried on for a couple more locks to moor up for the day in Boxmoor west of Hemel.  
 

The towpaths were very muddy through Hemel so it was nice to get out into the country where the towpaths are not so bad.  We were moored next to a field so Buddy got a good run around with other dogs.  We had left some potatoes baking in the stove and they smelt delicious when we returned to the boat.




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