Going South

We are now heading south on our way to Reading to join the Kennet and Avon canal.

We started to retrace our steps on Sunday and happened to coincide leaving Lechlade with another narrowboat - Festina Lente - and came back to Pinkhill lock our mooring for Sunday night with them. It made the journey much quicker and enjoyable to have the company. The mooring is very close to Farmoor Reservoir and a short walk provides some stunning views. We were treated to a vivid sunset and a stunning sunrise here.

From there we travelled on to Osney Bridge in Oxford and spent two nights there, not really exploring the city but just enjoying the noise after the peace and quiet of the last week! Today we have moved on to Abingdon and are moored up just outside what looks to be a very attractive town which we will explore tomorrow. (We didn't leave very early this morning as the rain was not very conducive to getting out of bed!) Certainly the mooring is ideal with lots of mown grass for T n T to rush around in and they have 2 Westies in the boat next door for company.

Early morning at Pinkhill Lock

View over Farmoor Reservoir

Farmoor Reservoir

Setting sun at Pinkhill lock

Cormorant on the lookout

Heron on the lookout!!

Mole on the lookout -well perhaps not!

Lechlade

We set off Friday morning in quite a dense mist but it soon cleared and became another lovely day. We had no more "Tim and Pru" moments so arrived at Lechlade around lunchtime. Nicholsons (The guidebook for all narrowboaters) suggested that there was room to wind (turn round) at the very end of the navigable canal but as there appeared to be plenty of room just after Halfpenny Bridge I decided to wind there and after I had walked to the end of the canal later in the day I'm pleased that I had. The river is quite low at the moment and the amount of sand bar showing would have made it an interesting manoeuvre.

So we arrived having travelled the whole way from Oxford having not seen another moving boat. In fact the lock keeper at one lock said that the previous day he had been on duty he had no boats through at all so was delighted when we showed up as the first and probably only one on Friday.

Lechlade itself is a very pleasant town, not many shops - basically just a good butchers (Sarah informs me) and a good quality Londis. It does also have an independent wine merchant but as they had no Muscadet Sarah declared them useless - but some very fine buildings and an interesting 15th century church. One place not to be missed is an antique emporium named The Brown Bear, truly an Aladdin's cave of everything from a whole room devoted to dolls house furnishings to bicycles and prams and cups and jewellery and sewing machines and garden tools and.......

At the end of the navigable Thames is the junction with the Thames and Severn canal which is undergoing restoration but nothing is happening at this end at the moment and there is absolutely no sign of the canal apart from a few information boards. Also the end of the canal is marked by one of a few remaining Roundhouses which were a design peculiar to this canal but it was very disappointing to see what a sad state it was in and as its privately owned no chance of getting close.

We debated this morning whether to move on or stay another night and decided to stay so went for a wander around the town and a lunchtime drink at the Swan. We thought a sandwich there as well would be good and I have to say that for size, taste and value for money its difficult to imagine better. The beer was from a local micro brewery "The Old Forge" and a very pleasant pint of "Hammer and Tongs" accompanied the sandwich. A very attractive pub too, highly recommended.

So having got back to the boat a little snooze was called for after lunch but that was rudely interrupted by a bunch of local vandals who tried to untie the boat, climb on board steal a fender and throw our ladder overboard. Still, I suppose thats the price one pays for mooring up in a field with young heifers in it! There are also a huge number of swans on the field but luckily they seem to show no interest in the boats at all.

Hey, another boat has just arrived (Sat 4pm)

Its just started to rain as well and the forecast is not too good for tomorrow but we will definitely be wending our way back towards Oxford in the morning.

Early morning mist

Old Father Thames at St Johns Lock

The Roundhouse at the end of the Thames and Severn Canal

The Roundhouse

Cottage attaching to Roundhouse

Halfpenny Bridge

The Swan Hotel

Inside the Swan

Local vandals attempting to steal a fender

Being Tim and Pru

A really mixed first full day on the Thames. It was absolutely freezing when we started off this morning even though we were not particularly early at 9.15 but I was wearing 5 layers a bobble hat and gloves, yet I'm now sitting here at 5.00pm moored up in a tee shirt and shorts with all doors and windows open to try to get some air through the boat.

We have done about 13 miles today and 4 locks only 2 of which were manned so the other two were self service. Mind you in theory they are a lot easier to operate than the canal locks but it can be a bit slow when your crew (Sarah aka Pru) tries to fill the lock with all paddles down. Anyway I cant shout too loudly (or at all!) as when I cast off to enter the lock I (aka Tim) had forgotten to untie the bow rope.

After those two incidents we decided it was perhaps time to moor up and have found an idilic spot just a couple of hundred yards on from Rushey Lock. The photos show you how rural it is but they don't covey how quiet it is. Not a sound, no traffic noise, no farm machinery, no aircraft, no railway, nothing - absolute bliss. The other huge bonus is the total lack of moving boats. Today during the whole day we have had one boat pass us whilst we have been moored but nothing during the whole of our journey.

We plan on getting to Lechlade tomorrow and explore it before turning round and heading for Reading and the start of the K & A

PS for any of you wondering about the reference to Tim and Pru its following a Channel 4 series with Timothy West and Prunella Scales on a narrowboat with some less than perfect boat handling incidents.

View from our mooring looking upstream

View from our mooring looking downstream

Topiary frog at Rushey Lock

On to the Thames

We have had a very relaxing couple of days at Thrupp and took advantage of the good weather to reweatherproof the cratch cover and try to resite the nose button.

Also had a walk up to an abandoned manor house at Hampton Gay. Apparently the house was destroyed by fire in the late 1800's and local superstition says that it was in retribution to the occupants who refused to take in casualties from an infamous train crash which happened locally when a train and carriages came of the rails and plunged into the River Cherwell.

 We loved our journey down the Oxford but it made us work for the enjoyment. Of the 36 locks on this section of the canal only one was set in our favour when we arrived.

So today we got onto the Thames.

The idea had been to moor up before the first lock but to our eyes there didn't appear anywhere to moor although indicated in Nicholsons. We asked the lock keeper about mooring and it appears you just moor wherever you can, some of which might be charged by the landowner and some not. Tonight we are actually on a 24 hour mooring at the end of the lock staging. The good news is that the licence cost a lot less than I had calculated, obviously my maths at converting imperial square feet to metric is not what it should be but at least its in the right direction.

It is amazingly quiet on the river though. Coming up from Dukes Cut we saw no one and since being moored up at 1pm the only boat we have seen is a Environment Agency launch

Hampton Gay Manor House

Hampton Gay Manor House

Checking we are locking properly

First mooring on the Thames at Eynsham Lock

Two heads are better than one

We are continuing our leisurely journey down the Oxford canal and have just spent a couple of nights moored up at Lower Hayford, a favourite mooring from our last trip down the Oxford. The only problem with it is that it seems to be the only place in the country that my “3” mi-fi broadband can’t get a signal whatsoever so we have been cut off from the world.

After our couple of nights at Flecknoe we motored on to Cropready for a night and then on to Lower Hayford. The weather has been absolutely superb so much so that one evening after a long day travelling I found that I appeared to be travelling with a panda rather than Sarah as, hatless but with large sunglasses on she had spent most of the day on deck and with the breeze blowing hadn’t realised quite how strong the sun was. Unfortunately I was forbidden under pain of death to take a photograph of her to show you.

The only cloud this week was really that Sarah’s bad knee has returned after she had a day locking up the Napton flight so since then she has been on the tiller and I’ve done the locks. We managed to get her some lubrication for it in Banbury (no, not a bottle of scotch) and hopefully after the last couple of days rest she is at least walking again. In fact we went to see Roushall Gardens Saturday afternoon which is about a mile and a half from where we were moored. It is well worth the visit, privately owned, not the National Trust, and very low key, no shop, no cafe etc just acres of well tended gardens to wander in and admire. The knee seemed to survive.

Sunday we moved on a few miles to Thrupp. What a change in the weather, really cold and we were wrapped up all day. The day had not started exactly well as I decided to tighten up the stern gland and had just stuck my head down the hatch when it decided to drop on my head. The engine cover is probably 8mm steel with a sharp edge to it. The only saving grace was that I was wearing a cap so it was cushioned slightly but as they say two heads are better than one.

We plan to spend a couple of nights here enjoying the glorious weather which has returned today before dropping down on to the Thames.

Tree house overhanging the canal at Lower Hayford

Roushall Gardens

Roushall Gardens

Roushall Gardens

A folly on the walk to Steeple Aston

? another folly

Lower Haywood church across the River Cherwell

A quiet few days

Having come through Braunston and picked up supplies from the butcher and the chandlers we moved on to Flecknoe where we had arranged to meet our friends John and Louise on NB Ploddin' Along (guess what his profession is/was) for a meal at the Old Olive Bush. We were both moored up by mid-afternoon so got the tables and chairs out and had a very restful afternoon sitting on the towpath nattering and then wandered up to the pub which is about 1/2 mile from the canal.

We cant really recommend the pub highly enough. Great ambiance, great staff and superb food. The evening was, however, almost ruined by a motorist who seemed intent on running us over on the way back. We had torches and were walking facing him but he seemed to deliberately drive at us before braking to a halt, putting his indicator on and driving round us. Most odd!

John and Louise moved on in the morning but we had decided to stay for a couple of days and I've spent the time painting parts of the boat which were showing some war wounds where we lost battles with locks etc.

I'm actually quite glad we were moored up today though given the strength of the wind and we were thing of J & L who were due to be going into their new marina this morning. One way of making their presence known! How did it go John?

Ater much discussion and research we have decided (or at least I have decided) that we are not going to do the trip down the Severn between Sharpness and Bristol. The more I researched it the more it seemed that discretion was perhaps the order of the day and the likely costs were mounting with  a pilot for the main journey costing £190 and for the hop from Portishead to Bristol another £140 and then the overnight cost at £40 a night when you don't know how long the weather will delay you and the need for longer ropes, an engine service, a fuel tank clean out etc all seemed to be a bit excessive for a few hours of being scared s***less on a wide open expanse of water.

So tomorrow we continue down the Oxford towards Banbury heading for the Thames and then the Kennet and Avon.

View from the boat towards Flecknoe

The canal at Flecknoe

Bridge sign at Flecknoe

Blackthorn blossom (I think)

A colourful display on a neighbouring boats bow

On our way

We've spent the last week in the marina attending to the boat, vanishing the new top bunk (see below) and getting the cratch cover repaired and finally today we got underway.

We had a great evening out yesterday with another couple from the marina Nick and Nicki (or as Sarah prefers to call them the pair of nickers!). Nick used to have his boat next to us but then moved to the other side of the marina (he assured us it wasn't something we had done) and it was super to catch up with them over a few beers and a great meal at the Red Lion in Crick.

So today we were away from the marina at about 9am, a beautiful morning to be on the cut and after filling up with diesel coal and gas, albeit not at our marina as they had run out of gas, we had a quiet run down to the flight of locks at Watford and for once there was no queue and we were virtually straight into the locks and Sarah even had help with the gates from some young gongoozlers that were on holiday.

Having had a swift run through Watford we decided to press on for Braunston as we had a provisional arrangement to meet some friends there on Friday. We were not so lucky with the Braunston set of locks though. They were virtually all set against us and with no one to share the locks with it was a slow journey. The boats we did pass coming up the locks all said that Braunston was very busy and given that there was reportedly a line of boats in front of us going down we decided not to try to find mooring in Braunston itself but have moored up for the night just down from the Admiral Nelson pub so I suppose we will just have to pop over there later for a drink.

Oh I nearly forgot to mention the new top bunk. At the end of last years cruising we thought it would be good to try and get the dogs out from under our feet so decided to make them a bed which would sit over the hatch from where they could survey the passing world. I made it during the winter and surprisingly found that it fitted when we brought it to the boat so I've given it a few coats of varnish and after a protest that the bed we put in it was too cold and shiny we covered it with a towel and now have trouble getting them out of it!

Our first lock of the year - Top lock at Watford

T n T In their new top bunk

Off again -late as usual

Having not posted a blog of last year's journey, I've decided to try hard this year to do one and keep it up to date.

We had planned to start in early March as we hope to get down to Bath and Bristol via the Kennet and Avon canal and as it tends to get rather busy in the season we wanted to be ahead of the rush. However this year it was my turn to thwart our plans as I managed to put my back out doing the simplest of things, sticking photographs in an album! For a few days I was not really able to move around and the thought of crawling around the boat putting her back together after the winter was not a pleasant one. However after some rest and a good dose of manipulation its now operating as well as it ever does and we got to the marina last Wednesday.

We've spent a few days doing odd jobs and for once coincided being at the marina with the owners of the boat next door who we always seem to meet as we were arriving and they leaving or the other way round so we had a very pleasant evening with them getting rid of some of the ballast we had brought with us (full wine bottles).

Our cratch cover rather suffered last year and Sarah wants it repaired before we leave which is hopefully happening next week so as soon as that's done we will be on our way.