The Grand Union Canal - Slapton via Marsworth Locks and Tring Summit to Northchurch.

With beautiful countryside and with lots to see including many canal locks and several huge reservoirs, this part of the Grand Union Canal is particularly excellent to visit.

The following is a continuation from our Wolverton to Soulbury 3 Locks - Grand Union Canal in England item.
The Canal passes by The Chiltern Hills on this stretch of it's journey south - The Chilterns are inundated with walking and cycling opportunities. The canal provides good links to some of these walks which can be made into circulars using the towpath and also by walking parts of the two Canal Arms which leave the Main Line in the Bulbourne area. One of these Arms is the Wendover Arm - only partially open to narrowboats at the moment, The Wendover Arm is one of the most beautiful stretches of canal you can find and provides excellent towpath walking.
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If you look at the photo above showing Slapton Lock 30's lock gates you can see on the right where there was once a second lock. To help with barge throughput quite a few of the locks in this part of the Grand Union Canal were turned into double or twin locks. Ultimately though these were turned back into singles as the commercial traffic movement on the canal declined (mostly due to the new railways being built which took much of the business away from the canals). The two photos on the left show Bridge 121 at Wolverton followed by Horton Lock 31.
Grand Union Canal Bridge 122 shown just below clearly shows how some of the bridges were built with double arches - the idea at one time was that the canal would have double locks along it's route to improve barge throughput but these double locks were not constructed in the end.

Marsworth Lock Flight, Tring Summit and The Grand Union Canal, England.

The area around the 9 canal locks which make up Marsworth Lock Flight is very popular with visitors - there are many excellent walks both short and long which you can do around the area. This includes a wander along part of the narrow Aylesbury Canal Arm which leaves the Grand Union near to Bridge 131.

Entrance for narrowboats to the Aylesbury Arm is controlled by a staircase lock.

This is where the upper gate of one lock also serves as the lower gate of the lock above it. The Aylesbury Arm was originally planned to go via Aylesbury to Abingdon then via the Wilts and Berks canal to link up with The Kennet and Avon Canal - creating a canal route from Bristol to The Grand Union and London. Another excellent walk in the area is along part of the really beautiful Wendover Canal Arm which leaves the Grand Union Canal under a nice bridge at Bulbourne Junction.

There are also several large reservoirs which were constructed to provide a water supply for the Lock Flight in the immediate area including

Startops End Reservoir (which is one of four reservoirs collectively known locally as Tring Reservoirs)

- this reservoir nestles right up to the parking area just outside of Marsworth Village [HP23 4LJ] The area is not only very popular with fishermen but also with families - children love the place because of the huge amount of wildlife - including permanently hungry ducks and swans - which are always around waiting to be fed. Just by Grand Union Canal Bridge 131 at Startops End there is a really nice public house and there is also a cafe just inside the British Waterways car park. Note the car park is pay and display (in June 2015 this was UKstg 1.50 for 3 hours or UKstg 3 for all day) - the car park gets really busy during weekends and bank holidays if the weather is remotely nice but much quieter during weekdays.

There is a small old pumphouse situated at Northchurch Lock and also a convenient seat too. Of possible interest is that from Northchurch Lock there is a nice 11 mile walk which goes via Northchurch Common and then along The Hertfordshire Way back down to the Grand Union Canal a little further along around Berkhamstead. Please see our Northchurch to Berkhamstead circular walk which describes this.