Somerton

Here I am Rune

Distance 4.8 miles

Total 1746 Locks 86 Tunnels

Running total mileage 2513.7 miles

A shorter trip than originally planned for today, we stopped for lunch and didn’t start again. We are still comfortably within the time frame for where we are intending to go so there is no real rush and since it started raining the incentive to press on sort of evaporated. We are moored about 200 yards down the canal from the overnight mooring we took on the to Oxford, alongside a field full of cows.

If we had continued it would have only been for another couple of miles or so since if we go too far beyond that we are within hearing of the M40 which wouldn’t make for a quiet night. When we do move on we should hopefully get to Banbury within the day.

Tackley

Here I am Rune

Distance 8.2 miles

Total 1743 Locks 86 Tunnels

Running total mileage 2508.9 miles

At last it is great to be back on the move again, and 8 miles and 6 locks feels like making some progress. The weather remains quite cold still, with a bit of a northerly wind blowing, but when the sun comes out it could almost be spring!  

We came through the ‘diamond’ lock to get onto the River Cherwell and I think I’ve now ‘cracked’ how to work it, you put the bow against the top gate then leave the engine in drive and then hold it in position by moving the tiller as appropriate, seemed to work quite well (and it helped the crew to open the gate when the lock was filled).

Tomorrow I would hope to get to somewhere around Ayno (where there is another of the ‘diamond’ locks!)

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

Dukes Lock

Here I am Rune

Distance 1.1 miles

Total 1735 Locks 86 Tunnels

Running total mileage 2499.1 miles

Another short trip today, once again to carry out the domestic chores only this time we’ve gone the opposite way to last time and are now down by Dukes Lock. I have to say that given the current state of the Thames I am not optimistic about getting out onto it. We’ve set a target date  of 22^nd April and if it hasn’t become navigable by then we’ll leave it for now and head off elsewhere. It becomes a bit boring waiting around for the river level to fall and by 22^nd we’ll have wasted nearly a month since we got here. As we are doing this to have a nomadic lifestyle, waiting around for extended periods doesn’t really work with it, we need to be back on the move again!

Kidlington

Here I am Rune

Distance 2.1 miles

Total 1734 Locks 86 Tunnels

Running total mileage 2498 miles

Today was just a reverse trip of yesterday so we are now back to within a few yards of where we have been moored so far. I say within a few yards since when we moored at the actual place we had previously moored a rather miserable bloke stuck his head over the fence and shouted out “You aren’t mooring there are you, you’ve been there for two weeks and you’re filling my house up with smoke”. Well using Google earth I can say that we are more than 100 feet away from his house so I don’t think that is likely. I did notice when we arrived here he came and peered over the fence at the boats that were moored and then went off chuntering something to his wife. Seems a bit foolish to me to buy a house backing onto a canal and then complain that boats keep coming up and mooring, but there you go. The nice thing about narrow boating is that when you have an obnoxious neighbour it is possible to just move, which is what we’ve done and are now over 200 feet from his house, he’ll have to be happy with that.

Thruup

Here I am Rune

Distance 2.4 miles

Total 1733 Locks 86 Tunnels

Running total mileage 2495.9 miles

First item of posting for a while because we haven’t moved much (at all!) until today. I don’t know why people criticise CRT for enforcing the 14 day rule because to be honest I don’t really want to stay anywhere this long. We’ve been around our current location since 24^th March and I’m beginning to feel that I know all that I need to about the area. I’ve now made 4 trips into Oxford (just for a bit of exercise and variety) but I am now itching to move on, except that we can’t because The Thames is still red-boarded on the route we want to take. We can’t go against the red board as it would invalidate our insurance (if I even wanted to go against the warning board). I think that we now probably won’t be able to get onto the the Thames until after we’ve celebrate Granddaughter’s birthday later this month.

Back to today, it was once again just a domestic chores trip to the sanitary station at Thrupp to fill with water, dump rubbish, put stuff in for recycling and emptying the elsan cassettes. After which we’ve moored in Thruup itself (something we were unable to do last time we came through as all moorings were full). Since there is a restriction on running of engines at our current mooring I suspect that we will be heading back to our former mooring tomorrow.