Luckily we had plenty of bottled water to drink and brush teeth with, but we knew that today we had to get to Abingdon to fill the water tank again.
We had another lazy start to the day, we folded down the windscreen and made our way through Kings Lock by 10:00. The next 10 minutes were eerie, seemed to take longer than 10 minutes. We knew Godstow bridge was waiting for us, it's arches ready to pounce!
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| The downstream approach to the skewed Godstow Bridge. The right hand arch with the overhanging tree is the route you need to take! |
Soon we were through Godstow lock and sweeping around a very peaceful Port Meadow. As we entered the outskirts of Oxford Osney Bridge came into view. We double-checked everything was down and made our way through once more.
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| Plenty of room! |
We moored on East Street and popped into Oxford to do some shopping. I found a lovely independent wine store so topped up the reserves a little!
The journey back to Abingdon was fine, the bridges all looked plenty big enough and apart from Sandford all the locks were manned, so our passage through was eased.
As we approached Abingdon we carefully passed the submerged boat in the centre of the channel and then had to queue for water. To call it mayhem is a bit strong, but there is simply not enough space on the services moorings for people who need to queue for water. A couple of hire boats (on from Le Boat and the other from Kris Cruisers) were giving a fine demonstration of how not to control a boat in the weir stream while trying to get somewhere close to the moorings - but there were a couple of us on the bank able to take ropes and shout instructions to those who were less experienced. All in good spirits and no harm done.
Eventually it was our turn. Someone had managed to tape over the vent holes on the stupid tap here which meant the flow was a bit better than others we'd used. Once we were topped-up with water we made our way through the lock and moored on the town side by the park (as we wanted to walk into town and this is the easiest way to do so).
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| Sandford Lock on self-service, seems to take ages but actually just an 8 minute fill |
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| Moored at Abingdon |
Today we treated ourselves to a pretty reasonably Indian takeaway from Abingdon Spice, then put the canopy back up for the first time in several days.
12 miles, 6 locks today. About 10l of fuel?
Timings -
10:00 - Leave Kings Lock
10:10 - Godstow Bridge
10:15 - Arrive Godstow Lock (self-service)
10:30 - Leave Godstow Lock
10:45 - Rainbow Bridge
10:55 - Osney Bridge
11:00 - Moored on East Street (shopping time!)
12:50 - Left the mooring
12:55 - Arrive Osney Lock
13:00 - Leave Osney Lock
13:10 - Folly Bridge
13:25 - Arrive Iffley Lock
13:40 - Leave Iffley Lock
14:00 - Arrive Sandford Lock (busy, and on self-service)
14:30 - Leave Sandford Lock
15:35 - Arrive Abingdon Services
15:50 - Arrive Abingdon Lock
15:55 - Leave Abingdon Lock
16:10 - Moored on Abingdon Park (town side)
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