At last we exchange town for countryside

Monday, 12 January 2009 19:18

We rather suspected that the ice would vanish over night. The temperature in the evening was 9 degrees and a very blustery night followed. We woke to rain and a free floating boat!

Time to move - yippee!

As we prepared to move, Nb Hadar chugged past us, soon followed by another boat. We figured that any last bits of ice would be dealt with by them! We were in no hurry, as we wanted to put the washing machine on. Then we could fill the water tank, knowing that we had no more washing to do for a while!

Matt from Tooley's went though their 10 point check with John - all OK and nothing to worry about!

We finally left Tooley's and Matt and Martin moved Rosamund the Fair back on to her mooring. She is for sale - anyone fancy a Restaurant Boat?! We are grateful to the guys at the boat yard as they have been very helpful and it was great being able to moor there whilst iced in. We are quite a bit poorer, of course. However that is what owning a boat is all about. After all, BOAT stands for "Bring On Another Thousand". (Thanks T & C!)

So we passed under the lift bridge (164) and onto the water point before the lock. I worked the lock (29) and we paused to empty the Necessarium at the sanitary station.

There were a couple of boats moored in the stretch below the lock, including Hadar. It is handy here for Morrisons, particularly if you can moor as close to Samuelson Bridge (168) as possible! It is also a good access to the railway station at this bridge, cutting through the back car park of the station.

However we carried on towards the area known as "Bankside". There are a few visitor moorings and permit holder moorings here. Nb Ten Bob Note is moored there at the moment. At the end, past the winding hole, it is possible to moor if you pick your spot! We moored temporarily for lunch with our stern sticking out - it was really pouring with rain!

After lunch John investigated the depth by the towpath and we moved a little further on to moor properly! A very pleasant mooring with fields to our port and green grass to our starboard before the fairly quiet road on the edge of Banbury.

Our mooring is about 10 minutes walk from Morrisons so we walked back to stock up the larder and freezer. Back on the boat it is lovely and quiet and dark - no street or shop lights to blaze in the portholes and maybe we will hear the birds tomorrow morning!

Here are a couple of photos from our visit to Thrupp over the weekend .When we visited Bladon Church we were struck by this window by the altar.

Cherub window

We went for a walk in the Thrupp Community Wood and we could see The Jolly Boatman pub from the offside side of the canal.

The Jolly Boatman iced in

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