What a mixed couple of days; all kinds of weather and not much in the way of mobile phone signals. Lower Heyford turned out to be one of those total blackspots for us, worse than Braunston, and Thrupp is only a bit better. We’ve got a 3 signal here, but it’s so slow, attempts to send email tend to time out, which is a bit tedious.
Hopefully, things will improve as we get closer to Oxford.
It was wet yesterday, and then although dry today, cold enough that in the end I had to give up and put gloves whilst steering, in the middle of June.
Never mind, there are lots of positives to focus on, not least the beauty of this canal. I wouldn't vote it my all time favourite, but there’s no doubt that it’s a classic piece of rural England. In addition, the canal itself presents varied challenges, from lift bridges to river sections to greatly varied lock depths.
We’ve been leapfrogging with No Problem for a few days, and have finally ended up tied near them just by the Boat Inn. They have a meeting planned with Bones and Maffi tonight, which we are going to gatecrash; we’ve never had a chance to meet either of them before, though we had an encounter with Bones this afternoon, as we went to and from the Co-op just a bit further down the canal, by Bridge 224. (It’s a good little shop, by the way, just right for a top up shop.)
People are very helpful with those of the lift bridges which aren’t permanently open; we had one opened for us at Lower Heyford yesterday, and two today, including the one here at Thrupp, which was very helpful, the approach being quite tricky round a bend.
The forecast is for an improvement in the weather, too, so some chance of better cruising when we go down the Thames, starting tomorrow; I had a merry half hour this afternoon, rootling in the lower part of the bow locker, trying to remember where we stowed the anchor.
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