You cant always believe what you read on Facebook

We started the day today with a stroll around Uxbridge, found a nice cafe near the station and had some breakfast.  Checked out the charity shops, which were all a bit commercial, lots of new stuff and the other stock in there was quite expensive considering it was second hand.  All I came home with was a black striped shirt which I am going to use to make some pirate bunting for decorating Rae. 
John on Amedeaus had caught up with us the previous day and was heading to Denham Deep so when we got back to the boat we headed off together and shared the locks,  Poor old John had only just got up when we returned, already full of breakfast, essential and fun shopping done and under our belts.
We had read on facebook that unfortunately a boat had gone down in Batchworth lock. So it was going to be another short but sweet day and we planned to stop at Rickmansworth anyway to catch up with Mick and Marie on NB Illusions as it had become somewhat of a tradition to do so :0).

Yogi, not Paying Attention!!!

We shared the first two locks with John and after that we were on our own.  What a lovely day it was too!! The sun was shining and you could feel the warmth on your back from it.  The towpath was busy with walkers, joggers and twitchers all enjoying the weather.  I had the opportunity to get my own back on Yogi at Denham Deep Lock, he was so busy looking at James Bills Coal boat in the dry dock he didn't  notice that the gates had equalised so I had to remind him to 'Pay attention!!' Something he had quite vocally done to me when I made him wait 3 minutes at Old Ford Lock on the Regents Canal!!  Ha Ha I think he got the point :0)  We had been checking the situation in Batchworth and it seemed that the owner of the boat had been left to recover the boat himself, C&RT had basically told him he was on his own!!  There were also rumours that he had left his boat unattended in a filling lock whilst getting himself a cup of tea!!  At the time we were feeling less than sympathetic towards him it has to be said.

Wide Water Lock

Just after passing through Black Jacks Lock I spotted a Kingfisher.  Well, I didn't just spot it, I experienced it.   It came shooting out of the water with a tiny fish in its mouth,  the fish was flapping furiously and I only saw it because its wet scales caught the sun.  It was less than an inch long and shone brightly in the tiny birds beak. It had landed on a branch not 3 feet away from me, holding its catch proudly, looking straight at me it seemed.  Watching me fumbling around for my camera to take a photo and realising by the time I had it, it was too late. 

We reached Rickmansworth late afternoon and moored up just above Stockers Lock right next to a huge fallen Oak.  All you could see was the underneath of it a huge expanse of dried roots and stones about 7 feet in diameter.  It looked like it had stood right next to the towpath and the rains had weakened the roots to cause it to topple away from the canal.  Lucky really, because it was a big old boy and would have blocked the canal for ages.  I couldn't help myself, I jumped in the hole, and started picking away at the root ball to get stones from it.  I figured that to be under the centre of a big ol'  tree like that they had to be be old, and I got some beauties from it.  All different shapes and colours of flint.  Am going to be making some pendants from them and am looking forward to seeing how they turn out.  Yog took a walk up to the lock to check out what was happening with the boat and met the owner Martin, he explained what had happened and it was quite a bit different to what had been appearing on facebook that day.

Basically, he had just bought the boat and wasn't used to the length of it, he entered the lock as normal, tied it to the bollard as normal and went to order tea and a bacon sandwich BEFORE opening the paddles.  He returned to the lock, did the paddles and didn't realise that the boat being 10 feet longer was that much nearer to the back gates of the lock.  The rudder got stuck in the gap between the gates and that was it, he couldn't even see what had happened as he was at the front with the paddles but once he had realised,the first thing he did was jump onto the boat to rescue his old dog and just had time to grab his wallet before it was too late. 
It just goes to show how quickly things can go wrong.  But at least he and his dog were ok.  Things could have been a lot worse.