Widebeam meets widebeam Tranquil Rose and a Lancaster bomber flies over

We left the delightful South Oxford Canal today and are now tied up in our favourite Braunston spot below the Admiral Nelson. As we came along the combined section with the GU we caught up with the widest-looking of wide beams diagonally across the cut.

To be fair, he was merely getting out of the way of an oncoming widebeam. Hotel boat Tranquil Rose came past us this afternoon.

I remember talking to a couple on one of the Braunston Turn bridges a few years ago; they were talking about buying a hotel boat business. I thought I had blogged about it but I can't find the relevant post. Speaking to the man steering, while in the lock, it was immediately clear that he was the one on the bridge that time. I thought it was four years ago; he said it was 2010! It's good that the business is still going strong.

As we came past The Boathouse pub a Lancaster flew overhead.

Nice and low and slow, so I could get a half-decent photo. It's nice to be getting our own flypasts!

We walked to Daventry for supplies this afternoon. Well, I walked with the bike and cycled when we got to the A45. When both paniers were full I cycled back to unload into the fridge and cycled back. We ate in the Wetherpoon.

HS2 construction begun on the Oxford Canal

As we rounded a bend on the South Oxford Canal this morning we got a shock. An army of diggers, scraping off the surface of what was farmland. And it was right next to the canal.

We were last here three weeks ago, on our way to Oxford. Now work has actually started on a project which I believe is a waste of money and a despoliation of the countryside. I am very aware that canals had their objectors and, no doubt, railways (ordinary ones) too. But in the internet age what is the point of shaving a few minutes off a very small number of routes?

The amount of land required here is vast. This was near Bridge 127 a mile north of Wormleighton village.

Near Napton Top Lock we passed a boat with a large Welsh flag on the tiller and a bridge-brushing array of flowers on the top. How can the steerer see where he's going?

We tied up at the bottom of Napton Locks. Two Napton Narrowboats hire boats came past heading for the locks. The first hit our boat and ground its way all along the side, going on to do the same to the boat behind us. The canal here was straight and wide, so there was no need to be bashing us. The chap in the second boat hit stuck his head out of the side hatch and remonstrated with the steerer, suggesting he might slow down. The steerer's response? If I slow down I won't be able to steer!

Grid ref posts on the South Oxford Canal, two flypasts and a butterfly

Every so often, on the South Oxford Canal, we came across white posts set in a short length of post-and-rail fence.

These white posts have an Ordnance Survey grid reference stencilled in red on them.

Some of the grid ref posts are obscured to a greater or lesser extent by foliage ...

... and one was covered by a hoodie.

Some of the fences have a two letter and two digit code. This one is OX55.

Here are two more I found, all snapped from the moving boat so not the best quality.

Does anyone know what they are for? I checked with a GPS once or twice and the grid references seem to be accurate.

We moved only three miles today, from Fenny Compton to the north side of Wormleighton Hill. We tied up with a great view over farmland to distant Warwickshire hills and had a barbecue. There was a sound of aeroplanes ... and it looked like it could have been a Battle of Britain Memorial Flight going over.

A few minutes later four more planes flew over in a diamond formation.

I don't know what these were - come to that, I don't know what the first flypast consisted of - so can anyone tell me please?

And a final identification of a flying thing if you could: this butterfly on brambles.

Actually, a look on the internet shows me that this could be a meadow brown.

Narrowboat wreck hiding in the trees

Today's travelling took us from Cropredy to Fenny Compton. On the way (was it at Clattercote?) I saw this sadly abandoned narrowboat in a small side arm (or winding hole?) being gradually taken over by trees and other plant life.

I hadn't spotted it on the way down the canal three weeks ago as this is the view from that direction:

No, it's not another kingfisher photo.

Speaking of which, well done to Steve of Albert, who identified its location (I think) from the blurry mess in yesterday's blog post. The kingfisher is the fuzzy blue blob in the centre of the image below, cropped from the original.

Back to today, and one set of bottom gates on the Claydon flight is remarkable for being made of iron. There are no wooden liners where the gates meet; despite this they seem to leak no worse than other, wooden, gates.

We strolled down to the village of Fenny Compton after tying up and eating lunch. Since we were here last the Co-op has lost a large part of the front of the shop after a JCB (or JCB-type machine) was used to rip out the cash machine. Apparently there was only £40 in it. (Sorry, no photo.)

In the evening we ate at the Wharf Inn: very good. Jan had lamb shank; I had proper steak and ale pie - shortcrust pastry, cut from a larger pie - with a pint of Hobson's Best. The beer was so good I had another half.

Spot the kingfisher

Is this the worst photo of a kingfisher ever taken? I think it's the worst I have taken, anyway. Can you see it? Here's a clue: it's in flight.

A butterfly - a red admiral, I think - landed on the boat the other day. I was hoping to photograph it with its wings outstretched but it didn't play ball.

The lure of all that lovely canal juice proved too much for another group of cattle today. We left Banbury and are now just above Cropredy Lock, in the same spot as on the way down.

Banbury's footbridge is no more

We've been in Banbury another day. It's a great town for boaters to stop at, being right next to the canal and with some excellent charity shops. Jane went home after lunch; it was good having her on board, even if we did no actual boating.

The footbridge that used to cross the canal between Tom Rolt Bridge and the lift bridge is now a pile of twisted metal.

This is the Castle Quay end ...

... and here is part of what remains of the ramp on the opposite side.

I am told that there will be a replacement footbridge, but at 90 degrees to the canal rather than skew as the former one was.

Appropriately tied up opposite Tooley's Boatyard was NB Cressy.

This evening we joined Peter and Fran of Sonflower and their son Alex for another (for us) good curry at Jool. Just before this I enjoyed an almost-pint (why do I always forget, Sarah?) of Heatwave from the Hydes brewery in The Exchange (Wetherspoon's). It was very tasty, as was the curry.

Captain Coracle's ... er ... coracle. Magic.

Arriving at Lower Heyford yesterday I could see a man in a coracle drifting around in front. He got out of the way as we approached and I thought that would be the last I saw of him. We had decide not to tie up near the wharf as the railway line runs noisily alongside, so we stopped a little further on, round the bend. As I was finishing off the usual end-of-day tasks (removing tiller pin and arm, tightening stern tube greaser etc.) I saw the coracle again and got talking to its occupant, me crouching on the stern counter of Jubilee, he gently paddling to stay still. More or less.

What a fascinating chap! James built his coracle himself after attending a course in coracle making in Ironbridge. This is actually his fifth or sixth and looks very professionally done. I don't think I'd seen a coracle close-up before. It seemed remarkably stable with James sitting on its bench seat, but perhaps that was an illusion. For Jamie Jibberish is a "humanitarian magician" who works with refugee children in the middle east, trading Magic for Smiles.

I asked Jamie where he'd come from. Oxford. What, he paddled all the way from Oxford? No, he came by train. With the coracle? Yes. Must raise a few eyebrows.

Jamie said he was meeting his nephew on a bicycle, so he slowly paddled off.

He said he'd fallen in the water only once, and that was on his first go.

And so to today. We had arranged to meet up with Jan's former college friend, Jane, in Banbury, so we pushed on from Lower Heyford and had lunch in shifts on the move. The weather was just about perfect: plenty of sunshine but not too hot. Another beautiful day for being on the boat. Instead of the usual pics of Somerton Deep Lock here are some horses on a hill ...

... and some cattle going for a paddle (but not a coracle in sight).

You could say I was going slowly past moo-red animals.

Hotel pair Duke and Duchess at Thrupp

We didn't do much today after the exertions of the previous few days. We walked to the Co-op in Kidlington, only fifteen minutes from Thrupp, where we bought the ingredients of the barbecue we had this evening.

We need to make an early start tomorrow, so we left our lovely 7-day mooring, passed under the lift bridge and stopped at the service mooring for water and Elsan. Then we moved a short distance further, to a space on the 14-day moorings among the trees.

This afternoon the hotel pair Duke and Duchess passed us. Here they are going under the lift bridge ...

... and pausing in the wide to pick up two passengers.

It has been blisteringly hot today, so it was good to be able to move the boat in the relative cool of the evening. By the time we tied up on the 14-day mooring it was 2145.

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.

Unsafe railway track work?

During the night last night, and continuing throughout today, a section of railway track was being relaid in Thrupp. In the early hours of the morning I heard the occasional hoot of a locomotive and a constant diesel engine running. When I looked out from the boat I could see a stationary long train of yellow ballast wagons on the line.

We walked to church at Shipton-upon-Cherwell; as we were early I nipped across towards Hampton Gay to see what was happening on the railway a bit closer. I returned with my camera after the service and took these pictures.

I saw diggers grabbing ballast out of the wagons and offloading it, presumably onto the track; I saw packs of concrete sleepers similarly being offloaded.

Here, not that you can really see it, a noisy machine seemed to be jiggling the ballast, presumably getting it into the right place.

This is the bit the title of this post refers to: a footpath runs under a railway bridge over the River Cherwell. A sizeable quantity of ballast had spilt down between the tracks onto this footpath. There were no banksmen controlling access to the footpath. If even one piece of ballast had fallen on your head as you were walking underneath you would certainly have known about it.

I managed to talk to one of the workers through a fence and told him about it; he said he would tell his boss. Rather after the event, though.

In the field next to the railway I saw a lot of black stuff on some stinging nettles.

Closer examination revealed it to be masses of spiky black caterpillars, with white spots, stripping the leaves of the nettle plants. And they are ...?

Back to boating. We moved on from the delightful village of Thrupp, dropping down another three locks and negotiating two or three lift bridges, to Oxford. I took the boat onto the Thames through Isis Lock in order to wind.

Having come back through the lock we reversed to the end of the Oxford Canal for the obligatory photo, then we moved on to one of the two-day visitor moorings.

After tea (and the Grand Prix) we wandered around the city for a while in the warm evening. Jan said she fancied an ice cream, so we shared a pudding of pancakes with maple syrup and ice cream at the Wetherspoons. Jan had the ice cream.

Back on board we learn that a thunderstorm is forecast for tonight. We'll see (and hear?).