'Summer' holiday??

The question mark says it all! Today has been a glorious day with sun shining all day and not a drop of rain. In fact I've been in shorts all day long and at the top of the Napton Flight even had to climb into the canal to re-tighten a tiller bearing that had worked loose! Set off this morning at around 9.00 as the Napton locks had re-opened and pushed on to take advantage of the weather. Final mooring is just before Cropredy having completed up the hill via the Napton flight and back down the other side via the Claydon locks!

Passed a man from Napton Narrowboats who had been sent to Banbury to collect a hire boat that had been abandoned at Banbury due to the fact that the police had told the occupants to leave immediately as it wasn't safe to remain on board - we pass through Banbury tomorrow!

The photo above is our final mooring this evening just above Cropredy.

I meant to report this yesterday but forgot! During our cruise yesterday, my brother, Steve, knocked my mobile phone off its holder. I spent a frantic few moments looking for it in the engine room before deciding that it must have somehow vanished! Eventually, we moored up so that I could remove all the floor boards and associated paraphernalia and discovered said mobile phone resting neatly on the engine support joist just inches from dropping into an oily and murky bilge! It's not often that things work out that well as the picture of the phone below shows!!

Well - tomorrow we attempt Banbury! This evening we dared to look at the BBC news website and, for the first time discovered just how bad things have got in the floods around the rest of the South and East! It's amazing howisolated you become on the canals with just the towpath gossip as your source of information! How far we get tomorrow will be interesting but for now, we sleep easy! I did comment to one friend on the phone this evening that there was a whole bunch of animals coming down the towpath towards me 2 by 2!!