The delights of Banbury

We’ve had an indulgent day in Banbury, though I can’t recommend the mooring we used last night, the last one before Sovereign Wharf. No worries about troublemakers or anything, it’s just opposite a large bakery, which carried on receiving deliveries of flour throughout the night.

Since the whole process was very noisy, especially when they started bouncing the tank to shake the last of the flour out, it was a bit disruptive.

This morning we ambled into the remarkable Banbury shopping centre, exploring the ginnels which run every which way. A call at the PO to collect our Thames licence which Elanor had despatched poste restante was unsuccessful; seemingly, Banbury’s post is routed through Swindon in Wiltshire (why?), and doesn’t arrive until later in the day.

In between one trip and the nest, we moved Sanity Again to a mooring outside the Castle Quay mall; another example of the way in which Banbury’s attitude to its canal has changed.

Returning to the PO this afternoon was more productive, and we now have the magic bit of paper.

I can’t recommend Banbury too highly as a place to break your journey; you could spend days prowling round and still find little nooks and crannies to treasure, not to mention shops selling this sort of stuff:

Tomorrow, off into the wilds again.

Not cross in Banbury

So here we are in Banbury, which is one of the most changed places, canal-wise, that I can think of. When we first visited, sometime in the eighties, it was just beginning to emerge from a long period of opprobrium; the local authority had filled in the town basin and turned it into a bus station, and it was a very unwise location to stay overnight.

Now, they’ve built a large shopping mall adjoining the canal, incorporating (after a lot of campaigning) Tooley’s Boatyard, which featured in a Canal Boat article just the other month. There’s a lot of visitor mooring, currently being well used. It’s not, of course, to everyone’s satisfaction, but it’s massively to be preferred to what was here before.

But then, I’m one of those who approve of the changes to Birmingham’s central canal area as well.

High spots of our trip down here included a white board set up by Cropredy Lock, with the injunction “If you could make one wish come true, what would it be?”, and a couple of marker pens attached for people to record their suggestions. There were the usual requests for world peace, naturally, but one person had written “One more night with Peter” which is quite a compliment to someone, unless there’s some tragic tale behind it, of course.

We arrived here in good time today, despite all the locks being against us. Wanting to diesel before it gets to the silly prices charged further south, we called in at Sovereign Narrowboats, and had to wait until they opened just after ten. Very good deal, 70 p per litre domestic and no trouble with self declaration. Only points to be aware of are that they don’t do plastic, cash or cheques only, and they are only open four days per week, Monday to Thursday, two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon.

We’re having a shopping spree, and will take two days over it, thereby allowing time for Elanor to post us some stuff we need before going on the Thames, poste restante to Banbury Post Office.