and on to Napton

So here we are nearly at the summit of the Oxford canal.  This picture was taken at 1945hrs  with the last of the sunshine.

Yesterday we had a gentle day. A domestic start, watering etc and shopping followed by a short trip out to bridge 100 to a familiar and very peaceful mooring.   This was where Geoff knew we had always had a good TV reception and he was not happy about our new aerials.   I managed a perfect picture on all the main channels with my aerial and he had absolutely nothing.  Much bad language ensued......

We decided to swap the aerials over..  Surprisingly Geoff now had a perfect picture and I had very little....Conclusion.....Faulty aerial you would think but since I was getting some picture I did not think so.   We decided to check all the connections and eventually after a lot of fiddling....and much more bad language (Geoff not me) I had a perfect picture.   So we suspect that there was a fault somewhere in the wiring and maybe our fiddling sorted it...who knows....fingers crossed it lasts.

Today we had our first full length cruising day.....well 4.5 hours.   We needed fuel and I had made some phone calls ahead to check on prices and whether we could declare our own split.
We had already ruled out Braunston Marina  £1.09 and only a 60/40 split.
Napton marina were 1.11 and only a 60/40.   Calcutt Boats was £1.19 and our own split but that involved a slight detour.  Better luck at Wigrams Turn.  They said any split we liked so that was the first stop of the day.

The forecast had been for lots of sunshine and high temperatures but it certainly took a while to get going.  Most of the morning was full cloud and chilly at the back of the boat.   However after the first 6 locks of the Napton flight things had improved and we were lucky enough to find the moorings above the 6th lock empty.   We have since been joined by 2 more boats but it is incredibly peaceful here apart from some quite vociferous birds!

Just 3 more locks tomorrow and then the long meandering stretch of the summit.




Total distance:6.43 miles 
Elapsed time:4h27m48s 
Locks:6
Bridges:13 
Average speed:1.44 mph (1.66 lock/mph)