Sunday 30 March 2014

In search of Tring Brewery and a bit of 'Timothy West' style boat handling

With the carrot of not just a pub but a whole brewery, G accompanied the dogs and I up over the hill into Tring. This, however, is where it used to be (the Herbies had advised us to get the 500 bus from Cow Roast) and it's now another 1/2 mile or so out t'other side of Tring town centre
 Honey I shrunk the dogs
 You don't see many Tibetans and even fewer in these, almost identical to ours, colour ways - Baxter doesn't look very impressed
 G was, also, unimpressed with the idea of adding an additional mile on to his walk
 so we had a look round and picked up the bits we needed for Sunday lunch- getting ripped off (I felt) by the butcher
 before retiring into the Black Horse for a pint of the Tring Brewery Ale before our return journey to the end of the Wendover Arm
 On Saturday we set off in misty sunshine and rejoined the mainline

 Muttley started limping again so I put both dogs back on MR and we joined a single handler (Mke) in Cowroast Lock to start our descent from the Tring summit
 Mike was delightful and, although slightly older than me, incredibly agile. His approach to boat handling seemed to favour the 'advanced' Timothy West style. G left Cowroast first and Mike threw his rope onto his roof before jumping on; except his boat then left without him so he had to climb down the bottom lock gate to re-unite with it. Having shut both gates I emerged to find he was waiting to pick me up (I'd forgotten to say that I always walk) and he ferried me down to the next lock where a pair were now going down in front of us. I expected he would pull in behind, or alongside, MR on the lock landing but he just abandoned it on the top gates leaving me with a considerable leap for the bank - no problem for him! I politely declined any further lifts. Quite a bit of gate bashing occurred as we completed the 9 locks down into Berkhamsted, but he was good company, no damage was done and the mist had cleared into a glorious day with loads of banter with the plentiful gongoozlers; "where are you heading?" they asked, "Belgium" I replied as I trotted swiftly down to the next lock.
 A lot of people around with the well forecasted good week-end weather and more boats than I've seen in a long while
 We weren't the only ones enjoying the sunshine!


Then my camera battery ran out so no more pics.

 We tied up opposite the park by Waitrose and walked down with Mike to The Rising Sun for a well earned (well we thought it was well earned) pint and found - to our horror - that it was holding a beer festival (discounts for Camra members). We left Mike there and had an early dinner in Cafe Rouge courtesy of Tesco (you can print the rewards vouchers off locally now - no more chasing them around the countryside).

 It's a tough life.

4 comments:

  1. WOW just 14 more sleeps and you're off... please remember to charge up the camera battery... we want lots of photos!! LOL

    Sorry to hear Muttley is off colour, did he get my message that his holiday home is ready if he doesn't want to go continental?? :)

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    1. Kevin, Muttley didn't get your message - I don't know where your message went. He asks that you might repeat his options please. He is feeling well but interested in options.
      Please don't mention sleep nights - so scary now xxx

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  2. Oh poor you... A beer festival. I hope you survived!

    Alistair

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    1. It was tough Alistair but we made it xx

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