Canal cruise a rustic reminder of times past

WHAT marvellous tranquillity and other-worldliness we experienced last Sunday as 19 of us Enrights cruised down the Grand Union Canal in Hertfordshire at duck pace.

A mallard paddled ahead, splitting the brown waters as if piloting us.

Like a band of brigands displaced on the roofs and decks of two elderly 70ft-long narrowboats lashed together, we followed that duck. The boat’s owner and our captain stood stripped to the waist at the tiller, luxuriant hair falling in curls to his shoulders, as wild and hearty as any Lascar seaman that ever sailed the main with Henry Morgan.