Banbury Wednesday 11 June 2014

We were away slightly earlier from our rural mooring this morning at ten to ten, just after leaving a hire boat came up behind us so that was good timing.

The chap at the canal side cottage at Somerton has his tent up in the garden again, its there every summer.

The brick work on the old lift bridge on Somerton Common is getting very bad now, maybe it should be taken down before it falls down.

We tried to stop at Aynho Wharf for diesel, I was just pulling into a space in front of a boat taking water when a hire boat coming the other way went straight across my bows, so we waited towpath side. After half an hour I went round to the wharf to see if they would fill me up while I lay alongside the other boat, but by now they were nearly full, they had already been there half an hour when we arrived. The boatyard instructed us to tell the hire boater they would have to wait until we had filled with diesel, I explained to them it would only take 3 minutes so they were reasonably happy. 10 minutes later and the first boat was full of water and left, we moved over, the chap was ready to fill us with diesel, 3 minutes later we had 180lt at 84p/lt and while I went to pay Diana took the boat down the cut out of the way. By now a second boat had arrived for diesel, but as they were shorter he could reach their filling point while the hire boat filled with water.

The second boat to take diesel caught up with us at Aynho Weir Lock so we waited for them to share, as they were not large or young we also waited above Nell Bridge to help them with the heavy bottom gate. The sunken cruiser is still against the CaRT Yard.On the towpath side just before the lift bridge is a CaRT working flat full of hedge cuttings, why do some people feel these are receptacles for their rubbish, some of my licence fee will now be used disposing of it.

Summer is well on us now and the Linseed is just coming into flower, these fields will be a blue sheen very shortly.

We were planning to moor between bridges 170 and 171 where the work looks as if its almost finished on the offside with earth banks being graded and drainage pipes laid, but instead we continued on into Banbury to moor outside the Castle Mills Shopping Centre as Diana wanted to do a bit of shopping . While we were here two men in a swan came along with a collecting tin, they had started in Stoke on the 1 June and plan to be in Oxford on the 14 of June to raise cash for Pilgrims Hospice  http://swansongforsue.com/ so we walked down and lifted the bridge for them as well as put money in the tin.

Our route for today