We left about 9am for Hemel Hempstead to join Anthony (Ant) and Veronica (V) on their canal boat for the day. There were the 6 of us, Margaret and Don, Christian and Ali, (their son and his girlfriend) and John and I joining them for the day. They were moving it north to sell it and it is a slow process. Today we were going to help them move it 15miles, a short distance but there are a number of locks. We loaded our stuff onto the boat then John and Don drove the 15 miles to Tring to leave one car there for the end of the day.

It was about 10 .30am when we started moving. The boat goes at walking speed so at time people did get off and walk. Steering is relatively simple so most of the men took turns. I enjoyed doing not much as I sat in the front and chatted to various people. I did about 1 page of blog and read about 6 pages of book.

I felt a bit guilty that I didn't help at the locks. I was happy getting on and off the boat when it was moored but not when it was moving and I didn’t want to get stuck ashore. I was able to help set out food and do the dishes afterwards. We had heaps of food on board and put out a feast for lunch. Then about half the food went back in the chilly bin to take home for tea.

Ant and V have a daughter of about 2, Michaela, who also helped keep us amused. By the end of the day she could pick out people by name. She usually could even pick John and Don despite the similar sounding names.

Our day was cut short at about 4pm . We had gone into a lock that was locked (!!) and it turned out so were the next few. We could fill it but it was very slow because the sluice gates couldn’t be opened. It turned out some local youths have been damaging the locks so they are now chained up. Unfortunately Ant and V didn’t have their lock key with them so we decided to park up here. In 6 hours we had moved about 6 miles.

It turned out we would probably have had to stop soon anyway as the engine was not 100%. It had overheated just before lunch and it had got hot again. The thermostat had been faulty and it looked like this was an issue still.

John, V and Don took a taxi back to Hemel Hempstead to collect 2 cars and then John drove Don to pick up his car. We loaded up the cars then left. However, we followed the Tom tom which took us on to the M4 and there was an accident so it was closed off and we were diverted. We were about an hour later than the others who chose the M1. There is a radio channel that has traffic update 'break ins’ and Magaret recommended we use it but as we don’t know the alternative routes well enough it would have been of limited use.

No-one wanted much tea so we had a few snacks then went down to start packing so we were organised for going to Ireland in 2 days.