doof.me.uk

It occurred to me recently that as I live on the Grand Union canal I ought to go exploring along it. One way leads to London, which is interesting enough, but the other leads to Birmingham, a place which I have only ever been to once before, and then only to the train station. It’s only 140 miles away. Sounds like a project. Part the first: Uxbridge to Hemel Hempstead.

This is a gloomy looking abandoned industrial building near Rickmansworth. I’ve no idea why there is a huge monkey hanging from it.

I took a detour into Watford for lunch even though it’s not technically on the canal. The “North” officially begins at a place called the Watford Gap which for a long time I thought was located just north of Watford itself. It’s not: it’s much closer to Coventry. Perhaps I’ll encounter it later on the canal! Anyway, without that claim to fame Watford doesn’t seem very interesting. I guess it is one of the most northerly areas of London, which is somewhat noteworthy. The town centre was a bit bland and post-war, although there was a nice market area with a Japanese cafe.

This is a lock just south of Hemel Hempstead. There are a lot of locks on the canal: 166 in total. A bit later on I passed the offices of Imagination Technologies where I tried unsuccessfully to get a job once.

I’d visited Hemel Hempstead once before but in true doof.me.uk style I blundered into town after dark without any time to explore. I don’t think I missed much, the shopping precinct was very generic but crossing the Swindon-esque pentagram of mini roundabouts to get there provided a bit of entertainment.

Next stop Leighton Buzzard and Milton Keynes!

Last weekend was wet and muddy but I managed to go on a short walk from Chesham to High Wycombe. I wanted to get to Henley but progress was slow and boggy so I’ll leave that for another day.

In High Wycombe I saw this interesting abandoned mill or factory building. I wanted to explore a bit more but the area felt a tad unsafe.

While I was in Norway I noticed something very alarming. They have two kinds of pedestrian crossing sign!

The left-hand one looks like a normal crossing sign with the gentleman going about his business in the regular manner. But the one on the right is a sinister crossing. That guy is a) wearing a hat – suspicious – and b) he is sneaking. This sign is also curiously absent from the Wikipedia list of Norwegian road signs. What is he doing? What is the purpose of this crossing??

I was back in Olso again last week and snuck out on my lunch break to explore the former airport at Fornebu.

Now that the airport is decommissioned the area is a trendy office park for start ups as well as some of Norway’s large state-owned companies.

It’s unusually warm this winter in Norway. While I was there the temperature hovered around freezing and some of the snow even started melting.