Last Sunday we slipped away from our home mooring in Banbury and headed south for Walker Services, Aynho Wharf, Mike had already completed the linings on our rear doors and I had taken them to our friend Andy for painting.
Here they are ‘half finished’, later they will have decoration added.
Monday and Tuesday were spent at Aynho while Mike put new linings in our side hatch and inner back doors, these are just plain linings and will just be finished with varnish.
There was a schedule to keep to so Tuesday evening we headed onwards to Heyford and moored up in the dark just before Mill Lift Bridge and in the morning it was onwards to Enslow.
Caravan Bridge is still in a sad state since it collapsed last August (see Bone’s blog), it’s almost in as bad a state as the eponymous caravan of which only the wheels and axles remain! You can see the caravan in better days here, pic 2 from 1976.
Alex would be making us a housing for our generator over the next couple of days. This involved making a recess in part of the back deck area so he set to with his plasma cutter to achieve this. It was a a case of nibbling away a bit at a time to avoid damaging the wiring inside. Eventually the hole was the right size and recessed piece inserted.
On Friday the housing was fabricated and fitted and all that remains now is to get it painted the same colour as the rest of the boat.
We intended to go down to Thrupp for a couple of days but the weather conspired to be so foul we stayed put as we would only be able to stay there for 48 hours as the 7 day moorings are still being used as Winter Moorings until the end of the month.
Monday morning was fine and dry so we reversed back to the winding hole beyond Enslow Marina and by 2 pm we were moored up in Lower Heyford after running the gamut of Oxfordshire Narrowboat’s fleet rafted up across the canal as it was their ‘turn-round-day’.
All that remained then was to cycle back to Enslow to retrieve the car, we then settled down for a quiet night, but that was not to be as the wind started gusting so strongly that we had to take down our satellite dish for fear of it blowing away! The wild weather continued all night and we ended up awake for a couple of hours playing Scrabble.