Home mooring

Up early and away in order to get back in time to drive home today. It has been cold and misty with hardly any boats about. We only passed three all day. Heddi got off at Broadmoor lock and walked along the towpath to the village to get the car, while I took the boat

Napton lock 11

Quite a hectic day today. We left home at about 7:00am. The plan was to drive to Cropredy marina,leave our car there and walk to Williamscot to catch the bus. It normally takes us about 1hr50min to drive to the marina. The bus timetable said 9:27 at Williamscot. So that should have given us about

Hillmorton

We have left the boat at the boatyard and caught two buses back to Williamscot, then walked the two miles back to Cropredy Marina to pick up the car. We have to do it all again in reverse when we pick the boat back up again!  

Braunston

A pleasant chug across the Oxford summit, down Napton locks and along to Braunston. We decided to stop here so that we could go to the pub for our meal tonight. We usually eat on board, but as we have to leave the boat at the dry dock and take everything with us on the

Fenny Compton

We are taking the boat back to Willowridge at Hillmorton for the blacking following the abortive attempt last month. Whilst we were waiting for them to have a free slot AJ Canopies have filled the new cratch cover. It looks really smart, we are very pleased with it.  

Braunston puddle bank

Well today we were supposed to be in the dry dock at Willowridge, but we’re not! We set off early from Long Itchington sharing all the locks with Barbara and Malcolm on NB Pilgrim. We arrived at Hillmorton this afternoon only to be told that the hydraulics had broken and the dry dock isn’t working.

The Blue Lias

2 Miles 8 Locks It only took a couple of hours to reach the Blue Lias where the rally is to be held. We shared the 8 locks with a very competent crew on a Kate Boats hire boat. It was only their second narrowboat trip, but they were already thinking about buying a share

Near Ventnor farm

14 miles 8 locks A day of mixed weather fortunes, some sunshine, but also some rain. We had our usual early breakfast, but just before we set off at 7:30 another boat came down the flight, so we had to turn every one except the last one. Here there was a volunteer on duty who

Napton Flight

15 miles 12 locks We are on the way to the Cutweb annual rally. We spent most of yesterday tidying up the boat, which largely consisted of removing hundreds (I’m not exaggerating)  of spiders and their webs! When were here last for the Fairport do we prepared and primed some of the rust patches on