A final day in Abingdon

The weather forecast suggests that tomorrow will be better than today, so our decision to spend the full five days allowed here looks like paying off. We did our final shopping trip; as planned, we went to the butchers that doesn’t have a shop any more.

It was very efficient; you go to a hatch in the warehouse and ask for what you want and the guy brings it to you, and the pricing was pretty standard, but it still felt very odd.

You need to know what you are looking for – there’s no display – and you can’t see the meat before you buy. I don’t think we’ll bother again, not that we’re likely to be back in Abingdon in the near future.

This afternoon, we put in a solid hour's work on the quiz for the Braidbar Owners’ weekend in September. We know that we’ll be pretty tired after the National, and boating like fury to get from the Thames to the top of the Macc in the time, so it seemed a good idea to get it set up.

Forty questions (four rounds of ten) were generated in that time, so we felt pretty pleased with ourselves. Sheila had put in a bit of time before lunch analysing the previous two years’ results, so we had a reasonable idea of what works; there’ll be no picture round this year, some will be pleased to hear.

Apart from that, we had an easy day of it, reading the paper and attempting the quizzes which are a feature of Saturday in the Independent. Tomorrow, we’ll set off down river; we plan to stop above Day’s Lock, so not a huge amount to do, maybe two hours boating or so.

Still at Abingdon

We’ve had another busy day working on the newsletter, after yet another visit to Waitrose. We’ve also discovered that the only independent butcher in Abingdon doesn’t have a shop any more, you have to go round the back to his wholesale outlet. I’m planning to explore this a bit more tomorrow.

By this afternoon, we’d done as much as we could with the stuff we had waiting for the newsletter, and had written what we can of the stuff we’re doing ourselves. Obviously, some things have to wait for the event, like the report of the Opening Ceremony.

There might be the odd further item which may arrive beforehand, but otherwise, we can leave it alone for a few days. This will leave us free to work on the Braidbar quiz tomorrow, so it’s all coming together quite nicely.

This afternoon, we gave ourselves a break by taking a walk up to the lock to buy a couple of EA pump out cards, then looped back down the other side of the river, past the park area and into the Abbey Gardens.

We finished by rewarding ourselves with a Thornton's ice cream apiece (yum) and so back to the boat for a quiet cup of tea. If this post seems a bit short, it might be because I’ve written around 600 words today already, and edited about the same again...

Working hard at Abingdon

There’s not a lot to tell today, as it’s been much like yesterday. We shopped and then settled to a day’s work on the Newsletter.

I’m gradually getting to grips with Apple's iWork ‘09 Pages program in its page layout mode. It’s generally very intuitive for such a powerful program, but I’ve had to consult the excellent Missing Manual a couple of times, mostly reminding myself of tricks I’d learnt working with it over the winter, when I was first setting up the layouts, but had forgotten since.

We’ve got maybe another day’s work to do with the material we’ve got to hand at the moment, which will hopefully leave us set up to plug in all the rest once we’ve arrived at Beale Park. There will be interviews, and news of events during the weekend, and things contributed by other folks which obviously can only be done the day before publication.

Once that’s done, we’ll take a bit of time to start work on the Boaters’ Quiz for the Saturday night of the Braidbar Owners’ Weekend in mid September.

It’s a case of going from one event to another, though hopefully not from bad to worse!

Working at Abingdon

We’ve settled down at Abingdon for the rest of this week; it’s a chance to restock, and to start serious work on the newsletter Sheila is editing for the National Festival, to be called the Beale Park Bugle.

I’m going to run a new blog during the build up to the event, and as a handover, I’ll publish the same post to both this and that blog each day this week. Then, once we’ve arrived at Beale Park, I’ll just be posting to the other blog, hopefully with some photos of the event taking shape, giving an idea of the amazing amount of volunteer effort that goes into it.

Today, we’ve been concentrating on the Thursday edition; we’ve got some material in already, and we’re writing some stuff ourselves, of course. If anyone is going to be there, either on the site team or just as a visitor, and has stuff they think might be suitable (either because it’s informative or entertaining, or both) please feel free to email it to editor(at)nbsanity.me.uk, replacing the (at) bit with @. (This defeats the dreaded spam bots, which otherwise would detect an email address on a web page and start bombarding us with strange offers.)

There’s not a lot more to say today, really; there’s been a lot of coming and going of boats here at Abingdon, and a lot of very heavy showers; we obviously picked the right week to stay put.

It's absolutely Abingdon

After another excellent evening with John and Nev, we nevertheless managed an early start this morning, boating off at seven, leaving behind a Waimaru still drowsing behind drawn curtains.

It was a good run under overcast skies through Osney Lock, under Folly Bridge and down Iffley Lock. Sandford soon followed; we had a bit of anxiety there, as the top gates were looking very odd on approach, with one fully open and the other half closed. They closed OK once I’d taken Sanity Again in, and despite the control lights behaving strangely, Sheila was able to cycle the lock and let me out onto the long reach to Abingdon.

That was a fast run; it’s deep and wide, and with few bends, so Sanity Again was able to show her paces, without causing a breaking wash or disturbing the early morning fishermen.

We had to wait for another boat to finish using the pump out machine above the lock, and one other turned up just as we were starting, but it’s a good machine, and made short work of our full toilet tank.

Once down the lock, we were found a space just barely 70 feet long on the meadow moorings above the bridge. Waimaru showed up later and was able to tie just downstream of the boat below us, so we may be in for a night in the pub tonight.

Spending the full five days here is the plan; we’ve made an initial trip to Waitrose, but it’ll take a few more to replace all the stores we used during the run up to Lechlade. Meantime, Sheila was able to identify this fellow:

He’s a Red Crested Pochard in eclipse plumage.

Canine Water Transport

We’ve survived our first day of cruising with a pooch. It’ll take a while to get into a new routine, and to find out what we have to watch out for in terms of unexpected canine behaviour. As it happens, and nothing to do with Sally, the day didn’t go as planned from the outset, but all turned out OK in the end.

With around three hours cruising from Abingdon to Osney, and a target arrival time of 11 o’clock, we’d decided to start the day at six. This would allow Sheila to take Sally for her first thing comfort break whilst I made the tea, then we’d get up and breakfast as usual.

Sally could then have a long walk with Sheila from seven to eight before we started boating for the day. This bit went like a dream. I did some odd jobs around the boat whilst Sheila and Sally were out, then just after eight we set off upstream.

Arriving at Abingdon Lock, it all came unstuck when the lock wouldn’t work. It was on Self Service, of course, and since by now it was around twenty past eight, it wasn’t worth calling the EA helpline, since the lockie would be there at nine.

We hung about, giving the dog a bit of extra exercise, and the lockie and his assistant arrived on the stroke of nine, in the former’s case by walking out of the front door of his cottage by the lock.

When I told him of the problem, he walked up to one of the control plinths, pushed a button and it all functioned perfectly. He made some disparaging remark, and his assistant then worked us through.

Now we may be being paranoid, but, perhaps understandably, the lockies are very suspicious of the introduction of self operation, as they fear for their jobs. The guy at Abingdon is not one of Nature’s little rays of sunshine at the best of times, and I would not be totally surprised if he’d left the lock only half changed over, so that it appeared to be OK, but couldn't be worked by a boater.

Possibly unfair, but there you are. He certainly didn’t apologise for the fact that we’d been kept hanging about for 40 minutes.

Sheila steered up the river, and I spent a fair bit of time with Sally (in her buoyancy aid) in the well deck. She seemed to take to it OK, after some suspicious examination of the water streaming past, and showed little inclination to abandon ship, which is the main thing. We sent her below for the locks, which she didn’t appreciate, but we couldn’t take the risk of her charging about a lockside in a panic.

Time was getting on as we approached Iffley, and it occurred to us that stopping before Osney would be better from the dog walking point of view.

Accordingly, after a very smooth passage up Iffley, we pulled over beyond the first Rowing Club and tied on pins just by the Nature Reserve. When I walked Sally up to Folly Bridge later in the day, our wisdom in so doing was apparent; the moorings opposite Christchurch meadow were chocker, it being a sunny Sunday afternoon in July.

Tomorrow, we’ll amble on up river, stopping somewhere above Oxford.

It's a hot day in Abingdon

It’s been a very good day today, with Sally settling in and us playing with Sheila’s new toy, a 13” MacBook. It’s become very hot again, so it’s quite hard to focus on what to say in this post, especially after taking Sally for an hour’s walk.

I have put up some photos of the Swan Uppers on Flickr, and here’s another, to show that it appears that it’s not necessarily the swans that get treated an an undignified way ;-}

I guess that if you just wanted to take a census of the swans on the Thames, two guys from the RSPB could do it a lot more cost efficiently, but that wouldn’t add to the gaiety of life in the way that this performance does.

For those who are interested, there’s a full account of the history of the tradition here, together with a YouTube link.

I can’t speak too highly of Abingdon’s welcome to boaters, with free five day moorings, an excellent shopping centre and lots of activity to observe whilst loafing on deck. Admittedly, a rowdy party boat went down river just before ten last night, and came back even more rowdily some time later, after we’d retired to our well earned rest, but you can’t have everything, I guess.

Tomorrow, we set off again, carrying on up river, with the plan being to reach Lechlade sometime next week.

To Abingdon, and some Uppers

We've made it to Abingdon on schedule, and Elanor and Sally have made the rendezvous in good order. Clarence is here too, so we've had a couple of natters with her crew already.

Just after they arrived, the Swan Uppers appeared, and I got some photos of them. I'll write about it at length tomorrow, I think, with more photos; haven't got time tonight to sort them properly, so here's one to be going on with.

No, it's not back to front, the flag is!

Now I must get a shower, and cook dinner; chicken tagine tonight.