and so to Banbury

Another crack of sparrows departure, but since I had been awake since 3am it hardly mattered.........

We did not manage to get Boe up at that hour and she surfaced about 1/2 hour before our arrival in Banbury.

We wanted to go through Cropredy early as we had yet again been told it was full with people gathering for the Fairport Convention  8-10 August..   We arrived there about 8am and there were plenty of boats moored and there would not have been a space for us but the water point was free......nobody else up at that hour.......We hope that on the return journey up the Oxford it will not be so busy and we may be able to stay a night.  We chatted to a lady as we went through the Cropredy Lock who was going the other way.  She was really disgruntled as she said there were so many moored boats that it had taken them over an hour to come from Slat Mill Lock.    I cannot say we found the same problem, despite doing our normal slow routine passing moored boats.  Sometimes we do wonder why we bother as it does not seem to be a universal practice any more.

Once again we were moored by coffee time and Boe who had arisen by now, decamped to her favourite place on the roof... and proceeded to phone the world.

Total distance:6.22 miles

 Elapsed time:5h7m29s 

Locks:8

Bridges:19
Average speed:1.21 mph (2.78 lock/mph)