A final narrowboat journey

Today we joined with more than a hundred people celebrating the life of a founder member of the Boaters' Christian Fellowship. David Clark produced the BCF Word magazine for several years, was on the committee and played the keyboard at worship gatherings. He and his wife, Anne, travelled extensively on Thrupp'ny Peace, their narrowboat named after the Oxfordshire village where they lived. David died earlier this month.

David's wish to be cremated in a colourful narrowboat coffin was granted; his ashes will be scattered in his garden and in the canal.

Some aspects of his life were represented on a "wake cake": playing the keyboard, film making and his dog are obvious, but we don't know what the baked bean tins are all about.

We counted 19 BCF members, including Anne, at the thanksgiving service, all but two of whom came to the wake. This was held in David's local, the Boat Inn.

We returned to the boat in Yarnton, where the church service was, and boated back to Thrupp. I cycled back to retrieve the car ready for our trip to Wiltshire tomorrow for another BCF funeral. We were surprised to see two more pairs of Jules Fuel boats. As we need diesel we hovered by the boats and tried phoning the number, but spoke only to an answerphone.

After tying up I found the crews just about to start eating in the Boat Inn ... but they were on holiday and wouldn't have served me even if they had had supplies. They did say that the pair I had seen yesterday were going to come up the Oxford Canal from the Thames in a few days' time, so we should coincide at some point.