Wednesday, May 04, 2016

Thursday was unusually boring (cruise retrospective)

We passed through the industrial innards of Tottenham Hale and Edmonton. It was a dull area, grey, rusty and untidy. Rubbish littered the river and its banks, graffiti decked every surface, oil slicked the water for mile after mile. Even some of the boats were dying, and decaying into the river.

But there were some splendid boats amongst the living.



The locks were the most interesting feature of our journey by far. Most of them are fully electrically powered. With some of them it's gates only, with manual paddles. Most are in pairs, but one side is disused, and full of detritus. A couple have one electrically operated and the other manually. Take your pick! 
 The paddle winding mechanisms of those locks which are fully manual were of a type new to me, well maintained and very easy to use.
We met very few moving craft. Birds sat on nests, or busily put the finishing touches to a new build. We came across strange varieties of ducks and geese, possibly crossbreeds. But can Canada Geese really cross with Mandarin Ducks? 

We timed our arrival at our overnight mooring very well. We'd been poured on briefly earlier, having extended our lunch break in an attempt to miss the rain altogether. We chose to stop now about half way between the Waltham Cross and Cheshunt locks, and the weather turned really wet just as we finished tying up. We looked around us and smiled. We'd left the drab and dirty miles behind us. Now we were at the start of something more rural, and far more pleasing.



4 comments:

  1. The geese you describe were probably Egyptian geese.

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    1. Ahh! Thanks very much for that. Foolishly, I didn't take photos of them. I couldn't find them in my smallish bird book, and had no internet access at the time. I've looked up Egyptian Goose on the web now, and yes, that's exactly what we saw! Strange creatures!

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  2. Some of those big barges are rather interesting. I wonder if they are styled on Thames barges? They don't look Dutch, although the wooden one in your next (I think) post definitely is. What a shame about the drowned ones!

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    1. To be honest, Val, we saw so many different styles of barge that we really began to feel very ignorant! These two were the biggest and grandest. We'd have loved to look on board.

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