This great canal journey of mine has been planned over the past few months with what, for me, has been near military precision. I should have paid more heed to the words of the great German general von Moltke who said that no plan ever survives the first conflict. Or as Harold Macmillan put it, "Events, dear boy, events", capturing how the best laid plans in politics, as in life not to mention narrowboat mechanics, can go awry.

I was hoping that another famous line of Macmillan's could provide the script and that I would spend most of the week enjoying some winds of change, leaving the office life far behind. With freshening easterlies forecast, there should certainly be a bit of a bite on the cut this weekend amid our glorious spring sunshine. If only it had proved as simple as that.

Of course, the major event of the past week has been the death of our dear Queen Mum. While I couldn't possibly blame such a national misfortune for my own setbacks, the pomp and circumstance surrounding her ceremonial funeral arrangements does seem to me to highlight one of the main things that I am trying to escape from.

Being an old republican in spirit I can't in honesty say I was very moved by the life of the old dear and her two score retainers. I understand how she and Bertie were a unifying good during the dark days of World War II. But time, one hopes, has moved on. But has it? Watching the procession on Friday while frantically trying to get my flat ready for a couple of friends to sit it while I'm away, I found that a lump came to the throat and, yes, a tear or twain to the eye. Maybe it's because I was an Army kid, but the muffled heartbeat of the drums and the fantastic precision of the procession really moved me.

I have planned this journey around another England in part to mark my own Jubilee year - 50 years of breathing - and I found that the mood of last week seemed to evoke some of the old certainties of my childhood; a social order where people knew their place - ghastly really, but apparently so stable.

When the gun carriage bearing the Queen Mother's coffin drew up to Westminster Hall at precisely the stroke of midday that I was reminded of how we metropolitan folk now measure our days in minutes, not even hours: if there is one thing I want to get away from more than anything else, it is that.

Easier said than done, so far. I began the week with a thorough service of the boat's engine before the great journey could begin. An essential precaution - surely just the final formality before I was off and away. But Colin the mechanic said he had found a serious fault with the gearbox. I knew it had been slipping but hoped it was little more than a loose control cable. Alas, no. New oil was going in red and coming out almost immediately very black. Something was deeply awry. However tempted I was to chance it, the last thing I wanted was to be going downstream on the tidal Trent, for example, and the gearbox failing.

So we agreed to put a new one, or at least a reconditioned one, in instead. Which completely messed up the plan. And so it is that I now belatedly begin my voyage from a marina in Harefield, Herts, just offline of the Grand Union Canal.

But I can already sense that next week could prove more auspicious. After all, with a conjuction of Venus, Mars, Saturn and Jupiter visible in the western sky just after sunset, and a comet coming into view as well, there are omens aplenty about. Let's just hope they are good ones. I am aiming to be back on course by Monday. But for now it's Marsworth Junction by day's end then or bust.

· Mike Holland will be writing weekly online dispatches from his canal journey around England. Thanks to the wonders of wireless technology, you can email him at michael.holland4@btinternet.com