Its 33 miles and 29 locks from Bishop’s Stortford to Limehouse Basin, so we took a week to build up some steam, enjoying the prettiness of the Stort, cruising at our leisure,
Taking it carefully as instructed,
Making friends with the locals
It was looking a bit congested around the M25
With the daunting prospect of no mooring.
So someone thought they needed to check in early
But at Tottenham Marshes we struck gold. With a space that wasnt just big enough, it was in full sunshine
We now had 7 miles and only 3 more locks to complete our journey, thats roughly 3.5 hours travelling for us….. we could see the City looming ahead
At this point we could have taken the option of turning right onto the Hertford union link canal to get us back onto the Regent’s Canal. But we thought it would be fun to take the half hour detour and cruise around the olympic park ring.
We had teamed up with another boat who had the same intention as us, we’d checked our maps and yes it was now permitted to cruise but not to moor. As I was on lock duty I had the advantage of looking around the corner, and saw a clump of branches at one side. I dutifully called out a warning. “Go very slowly, there’s a tree down and I can’t see how much navigation its blocking. …..” hummmmm turns out it was blocking the navigation completely. Luckily we were able to reverse in and pull them off, as they were well and truly stuck.
It was pity not to be able to do the ring, but we weren’t short of other interesting sights, with some creative boat design
And most buildings reaching for the sky
We cruised past the Bow Locks which we are not sure if they are still operational to allow cruising on Bow creek or if it is just for tidal management only now.
And after 5 long hours we reached the end of this section of our journey by entering Limehouse Basin
