Thursday 31st May 2012 Ramble 5: Springwell Lock to Grove Mill

Thursday 31^st May 2012

Ramble 5: Springwell Lock to Bridge 165, near Grove Mill, North Watford.  This was a walk of just over 5½ miles on a fairly warm sunny day.

Springwell Lock is still within the Colne Valley Park so we rejoined the towpath in quiet, woody surroundings. Nearby are several lakes and reed beds. Some are where gravel was extracted, others old watercress beds. Now there are sailing and water-skiing lakes and quiet ones maintained as sanctuaries for wildfowl. 

The odd first thing we saw today was a large toy monkey swinging high on a disused industrial building on the far side of the canal. 

There were many canal boats permanently moored along here, many with their own gardens of herbs, vegetables and flowers.

We walked northwards towards Rickmansworth to Stockers Lock. Here we saw that one enterprising person had used their Diamond Jubilee bunting as a washing line. 

 

Also here, displayed at the front of the lock cottage, there is a collection of tools etc used in past. Stocker’s Lock had a house for coal tax collectors. Coal tax was collected as a toll going into London for 300 years up to 1890 according to information gleaned from websites.

 Near here is the boundary post between Hillingdon, London Borough and Hertfordshire.

 We were approaching Batchworth locks, an important stopping point in older trading days and spotted an interesting canalboat. It turned out to be ‘Roger’, the last wooden motorised narrowboat to trade on the Grand Union Canal and worked carrying coal until 1968. It became dilapidated and then was restored and is now used for educational purposes. Roger is the sole surviving example of a narrowboat built by Bushell Brothers of Tring, who constructed wooden boats between 1850 and 1950. 

Just here we saw a gaggle of geese taking their young out for maybe their first swim. This they did en masse with the adults fore and aft to protect.

At Batchworth Locks, on the outskirts of Rickmansworth, there is a Canal Centre housed in former stables. This area was busy with school children visiting and enjoying a ride aboard a canal boat, ‘Pride of Batchworth’ going through a lock. There is a shop and café here too. These are run by a Trust that also, each May, holds a large canal festival. 

After Rickmansworth the canal follows the course of the River Gade, a tributary of the River Colne and passes Frogmore Wharf where Tesco supermarket is now and yet more flats. This site was where WH Walker and Brothers Ltd once operated. Opened in 1905, the boatyard built and repaired large numbers of distinguished and hard-working wooden boats. 

The canal passes on the western side of Watford and goes through Cassiobury Park. This is a long stretch of wooded parkland which was once owned by the Earls of Essex. The 4^th Earl negotiated with the canal construction companies to achieve a landscaped, wider canal with ornamental bridges.  Incidentally, it apparently took a gang of 100 men a month to dig out one mile of canal using only pickaxes, shovels and wheelbarrows. It is very peaceful around here and we saw several herons.

 

 

We finished near to Grove Mill where there is a sharp bend in the canal.