Grand Union to Berkhamsted

FWe attacked the Marsworth flight with the help of a single boater on his way to Tring where he works as a painter, houses rather than Moyet. All went smoothly until we reached the Cow Roast lock just past Tring railway station, where our companion left us. However, Sadie made a big drama of leaving the boat by falling in the canal. We have suspected she has been going blind for some considerable time,perhaps coinciding with her latest craze of strange yowling at night? Lynne rescued her from the canal and nothing seemed to be hurt, except perhaps her pride. A quick towelling down and she was back to her usual position of sleeping on our bed. Once we arrived in Berkhamsted Lynne took Sadie to a vet recommended by Margaret, but the news was not good. She was confirmed blind but with other terminal complications ( stomach cancer ) and very sadly a decision had to be made to euthanise her at the commendable age of 15. It goes without saying Lynne and I are upset, having spent 15 years of our lives together and having lost her and her sister Phebe in the space of less than a year 

This has been a particularly dark period of our lives.  We aim to stay in Berkhamsted for a few days to chill-out and regroup our thoughts away from the boat.

The evening was punctuated by a male swan aggressively and very noisily attacking a stray fender on the "wrong" side of Tardis Two. What the hell can be done in this situation? In the end we opted to wait for him to get fed up or for the fender to disintegrate.

Thankfully he gave up around 2300 hrs, much to our relief, only to return with renewed vigour and anger at 0400 hrs, much to our dismay. A swan attacking a narrowboat sounds a minor irritation, I know, but, being steel, every noise is magnified inside. We are not moored near a swan nest or interfering with his life in any other way that we can see, and boy have we looked !!! His wife and two fairly large youngsters glide nonchalantly by every once in a while, but otherwise there are no clues to his odd behaviour. Swans are protected birds in the UK, but even so it takes a brave soul to take one on, unarmed. Any volunteers?

The swan and offending fender( on side of boat)

I had several attempts at taking a photo of him flinging the fender against the boat side but each time he spotted me and launched a high speed attack, which cowardice convinced me to avoid.