Monday 4th June
We spent a rather soggy Sunday in Abingdon not doing much except going to the pub and watching the Thames River Pageant on the tv. As it was raining constantly there was no one in the park to notice we were flouting the rules about dogs but he didn’t want to go out much anyway!
We found a pub called The Broad Face, which was an unusual name we thought. They did a rather good pint of Old Hookey and a very nice line in home made vegetable crisps. They also had some very sophisticated music, jazz and blues, playing which was nice.
Today we had to move on to get water. I had done so much washing while we were on the free electric at the Shillingford Hotel and the next tap was not until after Abingdon Lock, which we stopped before on Saturday, so things were getting dodgy! We arrived at Abingdon Lock just before 9 am and spent quite some time tying up a widebeam which had slipped it’s stern and centre rope moorings dangerously near the weir. We could only find one mooring pin so we put the centre rope on that and tied the stern rope to the railings at the end of the lock approach.
After ascending the lock and getting water we set off with the intention of getting to Oxford. However when we got to Sandford Lock the yellow Caution Stream Increasing boards were up and as we had been having to do 2000 revs to go about 2mph against the flow on the way there we decided to get in to a mooring asap. As it happened there was one empty, free for 24 hours and £5 per night for the next 48 hrs so we moored up.
The moorings here are rather nice, on the edge of a field with cows in. The cows do come right up to the boats though which can be a little disconcerting especially when they have a crap right outside your door! Across the lock from the moorings is The King’s Arms, we took George there this afternoon and went back this evening and had a lovely belated anniversary meal.
It is about 10 minutes to the bus stop from here so we are going in to Oxford on the bus tomorrow.
