31 July 2010

Yesterday evening I walked back down the the Thrupp Cruising Club and saw Mike the mooring warden and OK our mooring for just one night,which was all we wanted. The club are very obliging in this respect if all visitor moorings are full and will accommodate you if they can.
After eating early onboard we walked down the towing path to Shipton Church which is adjacent to bridge 220 to watch Helen performing Kate's 1 hour monologue of "Now is the Winter" we then walked back to The Boat where we had a great evening with singing and music in the bar from Tim Howes and friends. Its a long time since I have been in a pub with atmosphere like this.

We woke early this morning with rain coming in the slide, it didn't last long but as we are moored under trees it continued dripping for some time.  Once up and about it was a short walk back to Annie's Tea rooms by the recently electrified lift bridge foe a very nice cup of coffee and to watch the fun at the bridge as boaters tried to work out what to do, both private and hire. Diana picked up a couple of books from the boat club second hand book sales and I spotted Maddie Forth with her boat delivering coal at the wharf.This is Maddie's last coal run before having "Newdigate" converted with a full length steel cabin.
We stayed at Thrupp until 3 pm. having lunch with my daughter and her husband in "The Jolly Boatman" as they came by car they had to pay £1 for car parking, but this is refunded against purchases in the pub, it also means there is room on the car park for customers cars.
It is some while since we visited "The Jolly Boatman" and were please to find that the food and beer were still of the same standard we enjoyed last time.

A few minutes after 3 and we were away heading for Oxford, just prior to Roundham Lock we were overtaken by a canoe from Thrupp, it was quite amusing watching them trying to balance the canoe on its wheeled trolley to portage it round the lock, By the time they had managed it we had arrived at the lock,turned it, got the boat in and were ready to draw the bottom paddles, but we had to wait or we may have washed them away. We next saw them at Drinkwaters Lift Bridge where they were taking a break before returning to Thrupp.

After this we met quite a few boats,most of the Oxford Narrowboats just setting out on their holidays. We passed Dukes Cut and headed on into Oxford looking for somewhere to moor for the night, the first place we could find where we could get anywhere near the edge was just through Aristotle Bridge 240 so we have moored there for the night behind a row of boats at 1830 hrs.