Attentive readers will remember that we visited Banbury last year, and explored Tooley's Yard, the oldest service yard for canal boats still operating on the system.
It does all sorts of repair work and has a dry dock where it can work on boats for extensive periods. In terms of ordered workshops it probably scores pretty lowly, but it almost certainly will have the tool somewhere that does turn the left hand widget on the gizmo. We didn't go around the yard again, but it clearly is a special place for boat nerds to visit.
The two boats in the foreground here are part of Tootley's yard, but in it you can see how much has been done to gentrify the canal side as it goes through Banbury, and how narrow it is for boats to get through, especially if there are boats moored on the right. The bridge you can see links the museum on the right to the shopping centre on the left. I went into the museum (we had visited last year) and had a chat with the man on the entry desk. The shopping development started in the 1970s, but the museum bit was not completed until 2002, and it's opening was delayed because this bridge didn't fit!! We then had an interesting discussion about the efficiencies of canal and railway engineers of the 18th and 19th centuries in comparison with today!
I used to come to stay with my aunt who lived in Banbury in the 1960s and again in the late 70s and early 80s. I remember there being a very large Bird's factory on the outskirts and also a cattle market which was quite a thing to see, hear and smell when you walked by! It was the largest cattle market in Europe when it closed in 1998 due to the challenges of BSE. The Bird's factory has now gone too, and been replaced by housing. The canal most definitely did not look like it does today, but neither did it look quite like this next picture either!
This is a Victorian watercolour of the canal at Banbury. The buildings in the centre are where the museum is today apparently!.
This photo was taken in 1998 just before it closed. Interesting to see all the men in suits! There were plenty of empty shops in the shopping centre, and also in the main streets of Banbury. I guess like other town centres, maintaining thriving shops is hard to do.
So we left Banbury to travel south through a lot of open countryside. One of the characteristic bits of canal furniture on this canal are the lift bridges which crosses the canal very often to facilitate farmers moving livestock from fields one side of the canal to the other. Fortunately most of them can be left open like the one below. They are a rather attractive visual feature I think and it takes some care and skill to navigate the boat through the gap underneath them!
There are very few communities that are located on the canal as the canal was added to the landscape long after communities had been settled, but sometimes you can see good views of villages as you travel along. The church in this village of Kings Sutton has a very splendid tower which certainly dominated the skyline.
The light was very clear today and we passed a very long stretch of White Poplar trees - quite unusual I think! They very much dominated the canal along quite a lengthy stretch of land not on the towpath side, so presumably some landowners choice. As we were travelling south we were coming to a point where the canal is crossed by the River Cherwell. This has been causing significant issues, as the Cherwell has been in spate making the canal dangerous to use for a short stretch. This is how the lock looked today that you go into on the Oxford Canal just after the junction with the Cherwell.
The Cherwell is passing right to left the other side of this bridge and very peaceable it was too!.
This lock is a very unusual shape and only one foot difference between the canal above the lock and below it, but it manages therefore to differentiate the river from the canal.
The canal and river then pass very close to each other for some distance, and the canal is sometimes higher than the river and then when it goes down through a lock, it becomes level again. The trees in the mid distance are along the banks of the Cherwell.
The countryside is very open here, and is less than 20 miles from Oxford, but has little signs of that city or villages either. We were coming to the deepest lock on the journey so far. 12 feet height difference. That is indeed quite significant.
That's the view of the back of the lock that I got as the driver going down. Looking up, there is no visibility of the lock operative or lock cottages or anything. You are certainly down at the bottom of the lock on your own!! It was good that the sun was shining!! In the rain, not so much!
Should you be interested, there is a property for sale next to this lock. It has no road access, the water comes from the canal and has a filtering process (not for drinking). It is off grid, and has diesel operated generators, but it does come with a 33 foot canal boat. The opportunity will cost you £325,000 and is band A for council tax. Any interest!!??! It would certainly be peaceful!
The last bit of our trip took us past Aynho which used to be a hire boat yard for Anglo Welsh and we rented a boat there once to go to the upper reaches of the Thames. We then passed Upper Heyford which has a rather significant river terrace on which the church and associated buildings sit. This barn was also very impressive and must be of medieval origin I would anticipate.
The field had a number of sheep in it with very impressive curly horns. We then travelled on another lock and a lifting bridge and have moored at Lower Heyford which is also located on a hill above the canal with the river just below us.
A pleasant day's boating with a mixture of a visit to a town and lots of country boating. We ended it with a trip to the Bell pub (and successfully got back to the boat) so that was very satisfactory!
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