Windy bits.

The journey into Uxbridge takes a couple of days from Tring. So we had a moving day - a day when we are not on holiday - but there is no show at the end of it. So it feels like a holiday. I love them. Of course, I love the shows too, but it's nice just to enjoy moving the boat with no real deadline, apart from getting somewhere nice by the time it gets dark.

And the trip into London is one that I really enjoy - it all feels very familiar, I have done it in various directions on my own boat - so it starts to feel as if I am coming home. And it is very odd seeing the countryside change as you come ever closer to the city, and sensing the difference in the people.

There is also one of my favourite bits of windy canal as you go through Grove Park, just north of Rickmansworth. It is all very picture skew - something to do with the Earl of Essex wanting his grounds to look nice, I believe, and the result is a couple of great bends with small and rather concealed bridgeholes. I love it. We didn't hit anything.

As we came in to Casiobury park to tie up just above the boatyard where I lived on stilts for a couple of days as my boat was being grit blasted and blacked, the people started to get a bit odd. It was almost like being in a film - travelling slowly through a random assortment of what could easily have been performance artists. The star was a guy who had taped a mirror to a tree, and was brushing his teeth vigorously with what appeared to be an invisible toothbrush. If something can appear to invisible, that is. We didn't leave the boat that night.