Whitsun Half Term

21 May 2009
Cowroast to Berkhamsted
I work on Thursdays but not Fridays this year. So it’s possible to get away on a half-term break on Thursday evening, but only by being fairly organised – something we are not terrifically good at.

I was home at 4:00 pm, and began throwing clothes into a bag, grabbing shoes, boots, coats, hats, etc. I’d already written a list of things to take out of the fridge – the rest being left for Michael, our 19 year old son.

We got to the boat by about quarter past five, and were into the lock outside the marina at about 6:00 pm. Fortunately the weather was fine, sunny, with no strong breeze. I was working locks, Alan steering.

Everything went well, although we had to turn most of the locks. When we got to Gas Two in Berkhamsted, we were in the top one of the two locks, winding the paddles to go down – we could see the lock below us was set ready for us, with the gate open. Someone appeared at the lower lock, shading his eyes against the evening sun, looking up towards us, then began to turn the lock against us. Given that the locks are very close together we felt this was unreasonable behaviour.

We arrived at the lower lock well before the other boat was going into the lock, but decided not to say anything about it. It’s always a difficult call, we’ve had people turn locks against us in the past, but what do you do – ignore it, and allow them to think that they can continue to behave like that to everyone else, or do you complain and risk them getting stroppy. In the past discretion has always won, although recently friends have said that you shouldn’t let people ride roughshod over everyone else.

For various reasons we did raise the issue politely with the bloke, who looked sheepish and apologised, but were then subjected to a tirade from his wife – including a catalogue of excuses and blaming us although it had been them who had breached etiquette. I’m all for a quiet life on the canals, I don’t generally complain about things, but I’ve seen more and more of this recently. What should you do? I’m not sure that the right thing to just allow other people to say ‘stuff you, we don’t want to wait, we’ll behave just how we want’ – and then intimidate anyone who complains. However, there is also the opinion that life is too short to get worked up about things like this.

We moored by the Rising Sun in Berkhamsted, ate, then popped in to the ‘Riser’ to see some friends who were there – however, we didn’t get the chance to talk to them. We were talking to a bloke about the music on the CD ‘jukebox’, when it became obvious that Alan had been at school with his brother, who is in the same line of work as I am, so we ended up speaking to him for a long while.

3.3 Miles, 10 Locks