A narrow section of the Grand Union Canal. Under a bridge. Bridges were sneaky. We'd head for the dead center of the span, and STILL manage to hit or scrape the side.
Coming up on a town. Bigger towns excited us, because we might be able to do some laundry, buy food, and mail some postcards. But ONLY if we could cash some travelers' checks.
This was pre-ATM days. We had taken travelers' checks, and then discovered they were very inconvenient, because no one in the smaller villages would take them, because "the bank came" only one day a week, and if a shop cashed a travelers' check for us, and had to give us too much change, then there wasn't enough cash left in the village for the village to operate until the bank came again. Wow.
Over and over we kept missing the bank visits. At one point, we had a small fortune in useless travelers' checks, and we were counting coins and eating cheap, trying to stretch out what little cash we had.
Going through a lock. Daughter on the right. Locks were easy and fun. Boats tended to "pile up" at the locks, waiting to go through, and everybody helped everybody else.
One thing that bugged me - if anyone jumped line, went out of turn, it was a 100% certainty it was American tourists. For some reason, most of the people we met, local and other visitors, concluded that we were Canadian (later we were pegged as Welsh), and after exposure to other loud and rude American tourists, we let them believe it.
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