Wednesday 16 July 2014

Another grand day on Old Father Thames.

We left Caversham yesterday (Tuesday) after good byes and thanks to Del and Al for a great meet.

P1040812

P1040816

As we said earlier, the views from the river are wonderful …..

P1040818

…….. and, as also mentioned, the river banks regularly have something of interest – like this field full of Alpacas.

P1040839

The weir at Goring is very attractive (as weirs go!) but the amount of water going over the top is pretty minimal during this dry spell.

P1040841

This lovely old boathouse is a home as well. Where else can you find stuff like this?

P1040844

Having started late today we cruised on into the evening and found this mooring at the Shillingford Bridge Hotel.  There was even £25 left on the electricity meter so Doug did a couple of loads of washing!

P1040848

Today we started at 9 o’ clock with a rendezvous organised just upstream.  This bend in the river holds ‘happy’ memories for James – it was here that he grounded “Chance” last time we came this way. They’ve installed an orange buoy now!

P1040851

We spotted this bird quite a way off and thought we hadn’t seen anything like it before on the river (maybe we’ve not been looking). Does anyone know what it is? No its not a heron…

P1040854

At 9:30 we achieved our rendezvous aka – Vic and Sue an nb “No Problem”. We breasted up with them where the River Thame enters the Thames for a coffee and a catch-up chat.  It was lovely to meet up with them again.

P1040856

We left Sue and Vic to their downstream journey and continued upwards – soon reaching Clifton Hamden and the lovely old six arched brick bridge.

P1040858

With a couple more locks at Clifton Hamden and Culham under our belts we got to Abingdon. This, sadly, is the only part of the wharf frontage we could get without the gambit of a load of permanent moorers.

Spent almost an hour waiting for the water point above the lock and by the time we’d taken on water we thought it prudent to call it a day.  With all the visitor moorings above the lock free we had no problems tying up and settling in.

Later we were invited by Rich and Andy on nb Carpe Diem to meet in the Nags Head for drinks and a chat.

2 comments:

  1. Hi both, your bird looks like a little egret - they're two a penny on the Otter!
    Debby
    x

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi James & Doug
    It could be an Egret - well that's my guess till someone more knowledgeable comes along :)

    ReplyDelete