Sunset and the End of the Day

The day was slowly dying as we left Luton and headed for the Tring reservoirs; a frequent destination of mine, but a completely new experience for the girls. I had already received an enthusiastic “When can we go back to the Discovery Centre, Bumper?” so I was on a roll for the trip to Tring.

On the way they recognised the Pitstone Windmill where two summers ago we had enjoyed some time taking individual multiple images of each of the girls at different places in the same picture. I had shown them how to paint through masks in Photoshop and each had created their own composite pictures on my Mac, and taken away a small print at the time. We soon came down the hill and into Bulbourne where they had a fleeting glimpse of the Grand Union Canal.

In Tring, we turned off to Marsworth, over a humpback bridge and parked by the kissing gate entrance to the Marsworth and Startopsend reservoirs, but just before we entered I took them across the road to see the Tringford reservoir and the Trout Stream.

We walked along the banked path between the two reservoirs, and along the canal towpath, with a stop for creating ripple patterns in the water with small branches, making eyes and eyebrows (an eyebrow activity!)

I thought barge families were supposed to be ‘green’ but a Greenpeace-bannered narrowboat was chucking out great gouts of blue smoke as we walked along the canal. We were having a very peaceful end to the day as the sun set over the water, and ducks flew in overhead, to land on the lake.

Tringford Pumping Station

Unlike many reservoirs the Tring trio of Startops, Marsworth and Tringford serve to ensure that the Grand Union Canal has enough water at its highest point, so the three reservoirs are used for storage and Tringford Pumping Station supplies the canal.

Originally the means by which this was done was by a Beam Engine, later supplanted by a diesel engine and now by electric pumps. There is therefore a large volume of free space within this Grade II listed building which British Waterways plans to use to house free standing offices that do not rely on any structural support from the original structure. I felt that photographs of the interior prior to the installation would be a worthwhile record, and am hoping that this can be arranged, so today I took the first of some external shots.

I then took a stroll to the nearby end of the Tringford reservoir and at the hide took some shots of a typical pastime for the lake, the walking of dogs, and a view from the hide before returning to my car parked at Little Tring bridge, where I took a quick shot from a tender belonging to one of the moored narrowboats of the bridge itself, over the Wendover Arm of the canal.

Whilst in the area, I met up with Billy the Baker, and Bob the Bailiff who was fishing from the bank and was able to record the catching of two rainbow trout, both of which were returned to the lake. Although showers were forecast, it was simply very windy with fast scudding clouds, and no rain.