It's been glorious today, bright sunshine most of the day with either a cold wind or a chilly wind but the sunshine has made up for it. We are both somewhat red and are still sat on the boat with the hatch and both doors open - I can't remember the last time we were able to do this.
After yesterday being really quiet and hardly seeing a boat all day, today we have been in a procession for most of the day. We've done really well though, travelling 11 miles, going down 12 locks and all in 5 and a half hours. The half hour was spent queueing at the top lock while a lock keeper opened all the paddles as the pond at the bottom lock (of 5) was almost empty, and we were the 3rd boat in the queue to go down. It helped that almost all the locks were in our favour and the few that weren't filled quickly, which was lovely.
Waiting at the top lock in a queue. Even earlyish it was still promising to be a nice day.
in total contrast to yesterdays winding route, these two photos taken one after the other show that we had one stretch of over a mile where it was completely straight. What a contrast. That bright light in the sky boys and girls is known as the sun. It used to come out in the summer but seems to have been lost for a while.
Incidentally we went to the pub last night - it was an amazing place, apart from the pub, they had a small shop, a salon for basic beauty treatments, a laundrette and a spice / herb area. Quite a little enterprise, plus they opened at 9am for breakfasts and there was a small site for caravans there as well. Oh and they did takeaways! Shame half of my steak was inedible, but everything else was great!
My quest for family names reached a high today with two daughters in one! Katharine was spelt wrong but the thought was there!
This is our mooring tonight and probably for most if not all of tomorrow as well. We are in Banbury, that of the cross (Ride a cock horse etc..) so as well as getting some groceries tomorrow we want to see the cross (not apparently the original - think Cromwell got rid of it) and also to see the boatyard where Tom Rolt (he who is named on the bridge) got his boat Cressey fitted out. For those non-boaters who may be reading this, Tom Rolt is the Grandaddy of the canals. He cruised them just before the outbreak of WW2 and through his persistence, the canals were kept open as the trade was diminishing for the leisure industry. He realised what a fantastic asset they were and fought for them. He wrote a book of his journey called The Narrow Boat and it's well worth a read if you have any feeling about the canal network. Great man.
Banbury appears lovely from the canalside. We have walked Paddy along the towpath past the new shopping complex, so tomorrow we will investigate further. There are lots of moorings here and it really feels as if the place welcomes boaters, it makes a nice change from some of the places we've gone through.
Just before arriving here we went under the M40, looking at the map it appears that we're going under it twice more. Strange. Also as we were coming past the outskirts we were assailed by the most wonderful smell of roasting coffee beans, as that faded there was freshly baked bread and as if that wasn't enough then there was the smell of warm jam doughnuts. We were in a state of frenzy by the time we moored up, sadly there are none of those smells here but the memory lingers on......
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