Thrupp to Aynho

We had a lovely time in Thrupp, it is such a picturesque little spot !  As we had visited Oxford by bus - and as we now have to get to Stone by 1st October - we reversed from the mooring, through the lift bridge and moored up at the water point!

We had been there for a while when we were joined by Maffi, we had a good long chat and sorted out all the world's problems ... it was nice to meet the man behind a very interesting blog !

Along our way we saw a fair murder of crows in the field, but the pics have all up-down-loaded badly so they are hard to see! We are having problems with bloody Picasa!

The canal gets pretty narrow in parts ...

When her lock duties were over, Elaine lay on the roof, Bombo lay on top of her and Geoffrey the no-eared cat sat in the life ring ...

He just loves the sunshine (which is why he now has no ears !)

We stopped at Lower Heyford on Saturday and went to a walk up to the village.

Very nice it was too, old school house below ...

The Bell Inn pub, they had a beer festival on Friday, Saturday and Sunday!

It would have been rude not to have stayed there Saturday night and Sunday night, so we did!  We both sampled a couple of the real ales.....Elaine borrowed some books from the pub library; you had to donate a pound for each book to a local charity. 

Sunday we went to church, well we went and looked at it!

Its a lovely village, amazing to think just up the road is the huge RAF-USAF air base at Upper Heyford (now closed).

I just managed to get a pic of the rear of Northern Pride - Barry and Sandra's old boat, the owner reckoned a lot of people know of the boat!

The railway station is right next to the canal.

We left Lower Heyford on Monday morning in brilliant sunshine and very warm temperatures.  Maybe summer has arrived (in Autumn!).

 

We went through Somerton Deep lock, which as the name suggests is very deep!

The gate paddles are very very stiff - Elaine enlisted the help of a fellow boater to help budge them !

The lock cottage at Somerton Deep lock, complete with Aussie blue sky ...

Elaine walked the dogs as I sweated over the tiller.

Lovely scenery around here ...

Bombo jumped back on the boat with a black eye - but very pleased with himself as he had been rolling in some sort of shit! Straight in the shower for him!

Tonight we are moored up at Aynho Wharf, right opposite The Great Western Pub - but we havn't visited there yet !  When we got into our mooring this afternoon we were just in time to catch a few rays before they disappeared for the night - quite delightful!  I also managed to clean down one side of the boat - although it was steaming when I was washing it, so not great conditions for it !

 

Tomorrow we will carry on our journey along our new territory (Russ and Tracy did this stretch for us on the way down !)