Heart of Herts

It's good to back

Well we are back home, or at least the closest we’re able to get to our home in Welwyn Garden City, which is about four miles away from here. We are moored in Hertford on Folly Island and this will be our home for the next couple of weeks until after the Bank Holiday weekend.

We are very comfortable here and know the town well. Our family and pals are close, we have a great mooring, water and loos are 100 metres down the cut and opposite is the bus station that can connect us to Welwyn Garden, St Albans and Watford. Chuck in the Waitrose next door that I helped open and worked in around 1981, and we have it very much sorted. It’s not the most exciting canal town, but it has everything we need close by.

The lock at Sawbridgeworth and the very attractive Lawrence Mooring complex in background
which has its own private marina

The distinctive gazebos that line the river in Ware, a couple of miles from Hertford

Since I put the word out that we were back in Herts, our diary has filled up fast so it is very much a social whirl over the next few days.  We also saw some old boating pals of ours, Ian and Irene, on “Free Spirit”, yesterday, who we last said goodbye to on the Trent in April. We bumped into them at Harlow lock last Saturday and they came up to Hertford for a nose around before returning into London. I expect we will see them again in the late autumn when we return to the Midlands.

So not a lot to report really. Doing a bit of maintenance and a bit of painting, a bit of cleaning and a bit of drinking, though not necessarily in that order. We did finally get to sweep the chimney on Wednesday. It was  something we had been putting off for weeks. Surprisingly, there was not as much soot up there as we had thought.

Preparing to start on the chimney. How does it go "Chim Chimany....."

Pat prepares the bottom end.

Our son Kevin, came over to the boat on Sunday afternoon, just after we moored. It is the first time he has been on the boat, despite several invitations, and it was a seminal moment. It was good to see him look so relaxed. He has started a new job and we look forward to seeing him again in October, in Birmingham, where he thinks he will be working, when we pass through, but  I think, and hope, he’ll pop down again before we go.

We have also had my sister Carol and her husband Rob on board, and their two pals on Tuesday. They made a flying visit and we have planned that when we leave our mooring and head back down the Lee in a couple of weeks, they will join us for a bit of a cruise.

My sister Carol with her husband Rob, and their pals John and Sheila

We have never stopped anywhere, longer than four or five days, so being on a 14-day mooring is a bit of a novelty for us. It’s meant we can make doctors and dentists appointments and I can go to a CAMRA branch meeting next Tuesday, for the first time in three years.

And that’s it. More friends tonight, an old neighbour for the weekend, plus a birthday barbecue in St Albans Sunday. Hardly time for strum. Hey Ho.