Southbound again

22nd May 2009
Berkhamsted to Rickmansworth
It’s been a long day, not a huge number of miles, but an awful lot of locks. No arguments with anyone!!

The sun has been shining, and I can now see that Alan is sunburned – so I guess I probably am too.
Chalice in Boxmoor Lock

We’ve taken it in turns to work the locks, and today, for once, Alan has done far more of them than I have. He now understands why I tend to fall asleep so early in the evening when we are boating.

It's been a good day for anyone using solar power, this set-up also heats the water, although we did wonder how this would go under some bridges

I bought a ‘slowcooker’ at the recent Cowroast moorings charity auction. Since we don’t have a lot of battery power on the boat, or a high powered inverter, I can only have a very low-powered one. I’d been looking for a while on the Internet, but all of them were far too high powered to use on the boat – then this one came up at the auction. It’s only small, but quite large enough for the two of us, and I pressed it into use today for the first time. I made up a vegetable stew at lunchtime, then put it on to cook. Every time I looked in through the window I could see it simmering away – despite the fact that it is only 100 watts. We ate the stew with grated cheese, and some bread, and it was really delicious. However, the biggest advantage was that it was ready as soon as we moored, and I didn’t have to do any cooking when I was tired and very hungry. Now I have to find out what else I can cook in it.

Today: 13.5 miles, 27 locks

Total: 16.8 miles, 37 locks