Yesterday, when we arrived, there were happy families playing in the river here at Radcot, but this morning it was kagouls not kayaks or cossies. But we needed to push on as we had booked a mooring at St John’s Lock for that night.
Wild mooring has its appeal…. when the sun’s shining
And luckily the showers became more intermittent and the locks were manned
Grafton Lock
Despite it being a bank holiday weekend the river was quiet, probably a good job looking at all the twists and turns we had to navigate
Even Lewis Hamilton would take this hairpin slowly
After two hours we were quite glad to moor up under the watchful eye of Old Father Thames
Old Father Thames, with the addition of a shovel
One of the benefits of river cruising is the availability of electric charging points along the way. And the Environment Agency gives mooring priority to electric boats. The downside is that they ask that you book 48 hours in advance, which we had done, but then had to cruise in the drizzle this morning to arrive on time. But equally so, we were able to plan to arrive with a low battery reading and leave the next day fully charged with enough power for a week or more.
Electic charging point at St John’s lock
We woke to a beautiful misty morning full of promise
So off we set, bright and early, well earlyish as it was before 10am. The paddlers and rowers were out on the river but we hadn’t seen any other narrowboats until we saw one coming downstream, it was Ian and Irene on NB Freespirit.
Here comes Freespirit
We both got our cameras out to snap each other
Smile we’re on camera
But Irene is much more up to date with their blog and posted first. It’s not often we get photos of the two of us cruising.
Thankyou Irene
We hadn’t set ourselves a destination to aim for today but the sun was now beaming down on us and it was a real pleasure to be out on the water. Lots of different sorts of bridges from what we are used to on the canals, some wooden,
Shifford footbridge
some stone,
The very old NewBridge
Beautiful blue skies, albeit it criss crossed with contrails
And some cosy woodland
Although some of the trees did make us chuckle
and plenty of cows probably chuckling at us.
and plenty of cows probably chuckling at us.
We moored up just before Radcot, we’d been cruising for nearly 7 hours which is a lot for us and if truth be told 2 hours longer than we ought to have been out in the sun. But as we were approaching a bank holiday we weren’t expecting it to last, and sure enought it was raining before bedtime.
Back in January we declared our intentions to cruise 110miles south to reach the River Thames in Oxford. 4 months later we have made it. That’s near enough 120 miles 120 days (we added a few miles on doing some of the Birmingham loops)
Highlights January to April
Believe it or not, we didn’t actually cruise a mile every day, but despite a few rough moments, storm Dudley, loosing my phone, loosing all the water in a canal, and recently loosing David, its been a good few months of a new adventure. And about a month later than we thought, we are finally here, leaving the Oxford Canal and going through Dukes Cut onto the River Thames.
Stop lock on Dukes Cut
Duke’s cut was built by George Spencer, 4th Duke of Marlborough, to enable him to take advantage of Warwickshire coal, by joining the canal to the river. Today it’s home to a small group of permanent moorers, which could make two way traffic tricky, but we were lucky and didn’t meet anyone.
Think we wil turn right
We hadn’t got the nicest of travelling days to move onto the Thames, but it didn’t take us long to reach Eynsham Lock and a lovely warm welcome from a lock keeper to show us the ropes. We’ve attached our long ropes for locking, got our anchor and mud weights ready to deploy if necessary and rescued the life savers from bottom of the cupboard just in case we fall overboard, so we are river ready. There’s plenty of quirky things to see and as we left the lock, she pointed out the Swinford toll bridge.
Leaving Eynsham Lock
Its one of two toll bridge that remain over the Thames. Motorists have to pay the owner the pricely fee of 5p and endure the privilege of long queues to do so, and regularly campaign to abolish the toll. But with 10000 vehicles using it daily, it doesn’t take a calculator to work out why the owners don’t want to forfeit this tax free golden goose. George III also decreed that no other bridge was allowed to be built within 3 miles of Swinford Bridge.
No Toll, but we do have a Gold Licence
Our next lock Pinkhill, was self service, which gave us a better opportunity to look around and see the wheel wind, so much easier than using a windlass. Raised Red equals paddles open, raised white equal paddles closed.
The weather really wasn’t inspiring for cruising, so we moored up for lunch at the Pinkhill picnic mooring . Another new treat for us knocking pins into a field.
Pinkhill Picnic Mooring
And as soon as we decided to call it a day the sun came out
