Kidlington

Here I am Rune

Distance 1.6 miles

Total 1737 Locks 86 Tunnels

Running total mileage 2500.7 miles

Well the decision has now been made and we are abandoning the trip up the Thames to Lechlade for the time being and are now heading back up the Oxford canal to go around via the Grand Union Canal to get down towards London. I expect that the flow on the Thames will reduce almost immediately that we are far enough away to make in not worthwhile to return but on the other hand more rain is forecast for tonight which will probably put the level up again. We have hung around here for nearly a month now so we need to move on to do other things.

We took a car hire for the last week to take a trip back to Torquay and, whilst the car concerned was OK (it was a Mazda) I don’t think I’d have one myself. Being a bit of a traditionalist I don’t feel that I need a car with all the ‘bells and whistles’ and this certainly seemed to have a lot of them. There was pretty much a warning light for everything that you could think of. The first failure came on the day we hired it when the light telling the driver that the tyre pressures were low came on. It doesn’t tell you which tyre is supposed to be low so I had to take it to a garage and check all of them, which were all perfect (more money wasted!). Whilst travelling down the M5 the car has a system to tell you if there is a speed camera ahead, this is fine but on the section it was concerned about the speed cameras have been removed and I was fully compliant with the 60mph limit. The Sat-Nav however felt it knew better and spent 5 miles repeatedly telling me to slow down, which became a bit tiresome as I was distracted trying to find out how to disable it.

Back on the canals however tomorrow we will hopefully make a bit of progress up the Oxford Canal as the weather forecast is good (as is Sunday) so hope to be in Banbury by Monday. 

Anthony Gormley's art work..........

........in Oxford