Grand Union Canal:Hunton Bridge

The first day of our summer cruise.    A blue sky to start, though it soon started to cloud over and the wind was icy.  We had a straight run through to Rickmansworth where of course we spent an hour in Tesco getting stocked up for the week.  There are accessible supermarkets all the way as far as Berkhamsted, so it's not critical, but Ricky is good because we can moor right up to the store and cart the bags back to the boat.    Lots of towpath activity beyound Ricky and of course Ironbridge Lock was well populated with gongoozlers.   Both Cassio and Ironbridge have brand new gates with gate paddles at last which will speed up these notoriously slow locks.   The offside gates paddles at Ironbridge, however, would not wind down completely.  Possibly something is stuck in there behind the baffles.    Quite a few boats on the move, but apart from Cassio Lock we had no companions.   We moored up past Hunton Bridge on the straight nearer to the railway line in the sunshine with a good TV picture on the small stick aerial.   The picture is probably coming from the Hemel repeater which is polarised differently and were we using the standard aerial would have meant reconfiguring it - a tedious business.  The stick doesn't seem to mind.    In the picture you can see some new build apartments in the background.  I wonder if they were cheap because of the proximity of the West Coast Mainline.  I doubt it.  I can barely hear the trains inside the boat.