Stanstead Abbotts

Here I am Rune

Distance 4.9 miles

Total 1959 Locks  90 Tunnels

Running total mileage 2754.7miles

Now back on the move, heading in the general direction of London. We do have a fair bit of time in hand to get there, my calculation is that it will be about 5 days gentle cruising to get to Limehouse Basin and we need to be there by Thursday of Friday. This part of the cruise needs a little bit of planning since we need to get a reasonable timed tide out of Limehouse (I don’t do tides before 7am, and even them reluctantly) to get us to Teddington in time to find a mooring. We need to get a Thames passage pass allow us to get to the River Wey and from their down and through Woodham locks on the Basingstoke Canal by Sunday at the latest. Should be Ok provided that we don’t get delayed by bad weather on the Thames.

Today’s trip from Hertford to Stanstead Abbotts was without incident and pleasant cruising. It was interesting operating Stanstead lock since we were coming down, following two other boats, we had to refill the lock as there was no boats coming up. What this means is that you can fully open the gate paddles and I would have to say that the water comes into the lock at the greatest force I’ve seen anywhere on the system, you wouldn’t want to fall into the lock once the paddles are open, you’d need to be an expert swimmer to survive.

Tomorrow I would expect to press on to Cheshunt or somewhere about that point.