Enjoy every moment

Thursday 29^th August; Banbury to Fenny Compton

It was a cool and misty morning on our peaceful bit of mooring.  Putting the pram cover on last night was a really good move, as the stern area was pretty dry with no mopping or bilge pumping required.

With the batteries, or maybe the fridge, playing up, we hadn’t done any shopping that wasn’t absolutely necessary, to avoid running the engine excessively while we were in Banbury.  So as we had nearly run out of milk, it was a quick dash over the footbridge to the Waitrose which has opened on the main road.

The young lady in Waitrose said she often saw deer in the mist on her way to work.  And as I’d spent over £10 and had my Waitrose card with me, I got a free paper.  We were away by 9, and it was distinctly fresh after the recent hot weather.  Long trousers and jumpers! At least till we got going on the locks and the sun rose in the sky.  We soon met boats coming down.  At Bourton lock I was hoping that the plums, as hard as bullets last week, might have ripened.  They clearly had, as they had all gone – I hope they were picked by the owners of the cottage, which has an excellent slogan pinned to the upstairs window.

The facilities area at Cropredy was in use and there was nowhere free to wait for the Elsan, so we went on up the three locks to moor below the Claydon flight for lunch. 

Elkington's lock, I think but may be Varney's or Broadmoor

Unfortunately, as we prepared to leave after lunch, two boats came by, so there was a queue, but it still didn’t take long to go up.  We were puzzled by this notice at the bottom lock; Claydon is a very unlikely place for vandalism as road access is very limited.

We had hoped to moor at Wormleighton reservoir, where we have moored before, but the top pound was just too low to be comfortable, and it was getting very windy, so we went on to Fenny.  We needed diesel, but were just too late at the chandlery – they had already closed up and gone.  It was very windy and with no guarantee it would be calm tomorrow there was no way we fancied reversing back from a mooring.  Bow thrusters would be nice!  So we moored where we shouldn’t, as we were indeed waiting for service.

The numbers of boats coming by, obviously looking for a mooring, indicated that we had made the right decision.  We were joined by another boat in the early evening.  The building site on the far side of the railway, where the greenhouse factory used to be, had a piledriver or similar device making an awful racket, but soon after 5 o'clock, peace had descended.

9 miles, 12 locks