You couldn’t make it up!

We took a very slow and relaxed cruise down the South Oxford Canal. During the recent heatwave, we stopped on a stretch of the River Cherwell for a few days and enjoyed having lots of cooling swims with the fishes (the little, tiny ones are very curious and like to nibble your legs!)

At Thrupp, we took advantage of  a temporary mooring with the local cruising club, it was only £7 a night and is highly recommended. This gave us peace of mind to do a mad dash up to Liverpool to see our son sing in the National Welsh Male Voice Choir Concert in the Anglican cathedral (the acoustics were amazing). And yes, he does sing in Welsh!

Back on the South Oxford, our destination is Newbury on the Kennet & Avon Canal (K&A), but we were getting anxious about a couple of locks that have been closed for repairs. Staying ever hopeful we carry on and turn right onto Dukes Cut to join the River Thames and head south past Oxford.

We haven’t been on the Thames for 4 years, but it is very familiar territory, and our rather tatty Nicholson Guide has lots of scribbled notes in it with favourite mooring spots. We soon get into the habit of cruising in the morning and tying up in the afternoon to make use of our boarding ladder for more cooling swims this time with bigger fish, curious swans and rather noisy geese (and the occasional kingfisher).

There are quite a diverse range of waterway users on the Thames including college rowers, swimmers and paddle boarders. There is one paddle-boarder who we keep seeing, he is an older gentleman (probably our age hah hah), on his own and is camping by the river every night. On the third day we ended up sharing a couple of locks with him. It turns out he’s from the Ukraine and about 50 years ago whilst living in the Soviet Union, he read the book “Three Men in a Boat” by Jerome K Jerome. The story inspired him to recreate the voyage for himself and travel on the Thames from Oxford to London. I asked what his family thought of him doing this on his own, on a paddle board; he shrugged “they don’t worry about me, they are used to me and my adventures!”. I hope he made  it as he only had 4 days left and just under 60 miles to go.

 

As we were pootled on we were delighted and very relieved to hear that the repairs to the locks on the K & A were all completed. Sadly, this didn’t last as it wasn’t long before  a “drunken sailor” (boater) crashed into the gates of one of them and broke it. Navigation was closed again and so with apprehension levels rising we carried on towards Pangbourne Meadow to wait for an update. The next day a miracle happened and the lock was fixed again, they just had to  lift a 900kg gate back into place. Hurrah! So with harmony and calm restored we now had a whole week to get to Newbury (easy peasy). The next day we decided to go for it and have a long day cruising to get off the Thames at Reading and past those troublesome locks on the K&A.

But you guessed it I spoke too soon, as we passed through our first lock of the day, we were informed that the next one at Caversham had broken the previous day and wouldn’t be fixed for at least a couple of days (As I edit this, we’re on day 4). We are stuck… again! What can you do??? Well, we went back to what we did in Banbury, when we were stopped by a fallen tree, we pulled over in the town and went to the cinema. Here’s hoping we still make it to Newbury in time for our next adventure!