Day 156 and another beautiful day but the river was quiet, not just us thinking this the lock keepers are saying it is quiet too. Passed though Abingdon which J knows from her first project when she was working at Plaut, so some memories evoked there. We were chased through Abingdon bridge by a flying swan.

Moved onto Oxford, going under Folly bridge tricky because of a huge number of moored trip boats; however glad that river was still quiet, no rowers despite us going past all the university boat houses. D had an altercation with a fisherman when we were looking for a mooring. Finally moored near Osney bridge which is really convenient to get into the centre of the city. Went for a self guided tour of the sites. Pleased to find a Gormley statue which we didn’t know about, some of you might recall we had a Gormley themed holiday a few years ago.

Day 157 and a longer day, again beautiful and the river was quiet for the second day we didn’t see anyone for the first three hours. You leave Oxford past Port Meadow, we saw a balloon over Oxford as we left.

A couple of miles after this the river starts to wind more enthusiastically, in some sections you would be lucky to find a straight bit of bank 60ft long let alone one you would consider trying to moor at. We saw a number of kingfishers and D saw a grass snake swimming in the river. Kept going until Tadpole bridge where we moored on the pub mooring so were obliged to eat in the pub (shame). A beautiful evening and plenty of stars despite a full moon which lit up the bridge like a spotlight. 

Day 158 and a cold but clear start, the day warmed up nicely. Quiet at the start of the day but there seemed to be a lot of boats coming away from Lechlade as we met quite a few, notably another narrowboat on a really tight bend. Saw five kingfishers! one was hovering and diving into the river just ahead of the bow. The first lock we went through had a very impressive bit of topiary

Went on to just above Buscot lock and managed to find a really nice mooring, the river does some almost 300 degree turns up at this end, makes steering narrowboat a bit of an upper body workout. Visited Buscot Park and house on their last but one day of opening for the year. It was a beautiful day and the place was really quite busy. Some very interesting grounds and art collections. J particularly liked some of the modern glass work.