Daniel Oakley

Third day out. Still very cold and breaking ice all the way, but we have the canals all to ourselves – fantastic. We have been taking it in turns steering on the back. Paul has got the stove going really well and with the cabin doors shut our lower torso is toasty, which seems to stop the top half getting cold. Mind you there hasn’t been much wind which helps.

We are moored up in Warwick by the “Cape of Good Hope” (another pub). Paul is threatening to drag me out again tonight. He has just muttered “Yeah..right…….it is Saturday night”. What worries me slightly is that we have to cross over a lock via the narrow slippery gates, to get to and from the pub. A friend of ours had an Uncle who met his watery end falling from these very lock gates one wintery night…………..

Friday was an early start – 7am doing our first lock in the dark. Then on up the Oxford canal, down the “Napton 9” and turning onto the Grand Union at Wigrams Turn. Then down the 3 locks at Calcutt and a mooring just before the “Barge” near Blue Lias marina, where we used to moor Solong our first boat.

As some of you may know Paul and I have been cutting down on the alcohol as we got rather carried away last summer, regularly consuming a bottle of wine an evening. However the long day’s cruising combined with a pubside mooring prooved too strong a compulsion and we popped in for a beer after supper. Still we were quite restrrained, just a couple of pints.

So fantastic to be off on our Christmas cruise. On Thursday 13th when Paul had arrived back from a meeting at Newbury we set off from Banbury. It was a cold but bright and sunny day. Very crisp and cold – what you might expect in December!

We just got round the bend from the moorings when we hit ice – quite thick, about an inch and a half, which suddenly made things quite exciting.

 Tht evening, when it was dark (about 4.30pm) we moored up miles from anyone at the bottom of Claydon locks.

We have been moored up in Banbury since early October and started some consultancy to keep us going. So not much traffic on the blog. I have built a new cupboard to store our work materials which were expanding across the boat. It is already full. Karen has been busy making calendars with the 1000s of pictures taken over the past two years cruising.

Christmas approaches and we have decided if we can’t take a geriatric dog anywhere, we’ll have to move the boat. So we’re doing a 3 week trip to travel to Karen’s sisters place in Kinver and back. There are closures on the GU into Braunston until 21 Dec so we are going via Warwick and through Bham. Napton re-opens on the 14th Dec so we hope to head off then. Maybe make Bham by 19th Dec.

So we’ll be back in the move.