If life gives you lemons they say – don’t be sour – make lemonade! Or as Monty Python would have it ‘Always look on the bright side of life’.
This week we had every opportunity to get miserable, fed up and utterly despondent. Our goals were being thwarted every turn it appeared. We left the Aylesbury Arm, aiming to head for Brentford along the Grand Union Canal, and there to head onto the tidal River Thames. From there we would move through the sights of Windsor, Henley and onto the River Kennet, before turning onto the Kennet and Avon Canal to take us all the way to Bath.
But as I write this, we find ourselves in completely the opposite direction, back in Northamptonshire, nowhere near London, moored up on a narrow towpath as torrential rain hammers down creating pools and puddles outside.
So what happened? Our highway is an old one, in this instance, many sections are over 200 years old. The stonework, metalwork, and woodwork of canals are subject to wear and tear of usage and weathering, to failure, and a constant need of repair and maintenance. This leads to a permanently state of juggling resources and finances to manage repairs. This has consequences, and anyone who has been following this blog over the years will have seen us diverted (around this time of year usually) because of unexpected failures or problems.
So we shouldn’t really have been surprised to find out, as we got to the top of the Aylesbury Arm celebrating having completed its length before it was announced to be closing in a few days time because of a lack of water, that we weren’t going to have an easy passage if we turned right as planned. To turn right would have meant a halt before many locks and another halt for a month or more further south. Locks needed repair because of problems which had come to light.
As you probably would have done faced with that news, we turned left instead of right, just as the weather changed. In wind and rain, we began wending our way back the route we had come a few weeks before, back through Hertfordshire, Buckinghamshire, Milton Keynes and now into Northamptonshire.
As a friend we met en route (thankfully he volunteers for Canal and River a trust as a lock keeper at Soulbury and we timed our day there to coincide with his shift- result!), put it “So you’re going in reverse!” We are indeed reversing our route – back the way we came, turning at Norton Junction to head down to Braunston and then turning onto the Oxford Canal. We shall travel almost to the city of Oxford itself before dropping onto the River Thames and follow it down to pick up our originally planned route of the River Kennet and Kennet and Avon Canal. That’s the plan but as we’ve seen this week, and in previous years, there are a lot of miles, and a lot of locks to negotiate before we reach Bath and each has the potential to throw a spanner in the works of our plan!
We’ve come up with an alternative, a solution, a through route in the face of disappointment if you will, but that isn’t fully embracing lemonading. The term appears to stem from researchers at Oregon State University when they looked at how people coped during the Covid pandemic.
It wasn’t just those who looked for alternative ways forward, solutions, or opportunities to be creative when things looked bleak who came out of the pandemic stronger – but people with a playful approach according to the scientists. If we channel our inner child, look for the fun and good things, don’t take ourselves too seriously, find humour in our days, help others and do the things we enjoy we will be more resilient, more capable of coping when we face challenges.
We’re looking for the fun things – different things, little things that we might have missed when we went this way just a few weeks ago.
We’re picking up and fishing out rubbish as we go, trying to leave things a bit better in our wake, but at one point, searching for a net to hoick out a large piece of polystyrene, as realised a duck and her duckling had commandeered it for a raft. We smiled at their ingenuity and left them bobbing about on their perch!
We’re welcoming the rain as a solution to the stoppages on canals all over the country.
The extra 106 miles and 24 locks on top of the original 188 miles and 198 locks of our journey also means we should arrive at Bath fitter (or exhausted!) which could be seen as a major bonus (at least in my case a necessary bonus!).
So on we go, armed with waterproofs and woolly hats, gloves and rueful grins about “Flaming June”. Will we get to our destination at all? Who knows, but we can keep trying, and if we can’t get there, we will get somewhere (with luck) and enjoy the journey with stops for plenty of lemonade (and cake?)!
Whatever life throws at you this week at home or work – get lemonading!
Pickingupducks 