Ride a Cock Horse

We pulled pins on Thursday morning at 09.00 as planned and headed down the lock and onto the water point at Cropredy. The wind when we started out was very light but after filling with water and setting off the wind really picked up. Its ok on the open canal if you get blown onto a bank it doesn't do much harm but the one thing i fear is getting blown onto another boat and doing any damage. As we were dropping down several locks today i hoped the wind would drop as we got lower and sure enough it did.

We struck gold again at Hardwick lock which is the last lock before Banbury. We have now just about filled the roof with wood but there was so much wood left in the hedge that I'm sure there will be loads still there when we head back this way. With the weather forecast to get colder you can never have too much wood.

We arrived in Banbury to the odour of coffee, it turns out that Banbury has one of the largest coffee factories in the Country. We picked up the first available mooring near the town. It was right opposite a bread making factory which was very noisy and there was the aroma of freshly baked bread and what we thought was Hot cross buns.We locked up Inca and walked towards the town and came across a mooring just in front of the Tom Rolt’s bridge and next to Spiceball park and thought this would suit us better so we headed back and moved straight away.

                                       We passed this boat in Banbury ,apparently it is owned by Actor Timothy West and his wife Prunella Scales (Sybil Fawlty).

                                                                   Our 14 day mooring next to Spiceball park with The Tom Rolt bridge in front of us.

After mooring we had a quick walk through the town and found this monument which is Banbury cross . I must admit it is not what we expected and it was right in the middle of a busy roundabout. The original cross was destroyed by The Puritans in 1600 and then this one was built in 1859 to commemorate the marriage of Victoria Princess Royal (Queen Victoria's eldest daughter) to Prince Frederick of Prussia. We will be in this area for the next couple of weeks so we will have plenty of time to have a good look around.

Carolyn has managed to get free Gym membership for a few days in the local sports centre so she is over the moon with that.

                                     Happy Days