We left Thrupp to an altogether sunnier and nicer morning, though the wind from the north was cold. Most of the way it was blowing on our backs so was not as chilling as it might have been. This was where we moored last night - a canal community with a row of cottages ending in the pub (with the blue car outside). It is unlike most of the communities that we've passed on the canal in that it was specifically built to support the canal and to profit from the canal trade.
As before, we came upon three locks which were all quite rural and spread out on our journey - we only had 6 miles to get to the centre of Oxford. There were several lift bridges too, and sometimes the next lock came upon us at an inappropriate time in the coffee making process!! It was my turn to wind this one, so I took the coffee with me!
The stretch of canal that goes into Oxford has a lot of boats on it moored as part of the city's Agenda 21 initiative which allows people to moor long term as residents. Even so, the number of spaces are limited, and I bet it takes a long time for a new boat to be added to those moored. Most of the boats were in reasonable nick, but there were one or two which looked much the worse for wear, and of course without a current boat licence!
There were two mooring areas for visitors that were marked on the map and so we stopped at the first, and then I walked on to the second which was almost a mile closer to town to see if there was one there. Fortunately there was, so Chris brought the boat up and we are moored about 15 minutes walk from the Ashmolean Museum. What is also a relief is that the lock at the end of this stretch is working - if not we'd have over a 2 mile reversing exercise as the turning space for boats above the lock is only 52 feet and we are 66!
We were walking along the towpath to go into town and do some shopping when this landed in front of us! He was quite unphased by our presence!
The canal reached here in 1790 and therefore completed the joining of the midlands waterways with the Thames. We have in the past taken the route from the Thames to the Canal via the Dukes Cut which is about 3 miles north of Oxford and was built at the instigation of the Duke of Marlborough to get coal from Birmingham to his papermill at Wolvercote. This was preferable to having coal come from Northumberland via London to Oxford.
This is the junction where the Dukes cut goes off underneath that bridge and leads you onto the Thames a little further up than we shall join it soon.
The area of Oxford where we are staying is called Jericho - those of you who have read Philip Pullman's His Dark Materials will recognise it as the place that the Gyptians moored their narrowboats and has something of an underworld feel. It is a working class area of Oxford, though it's in very close proximity to the City and to the location of Oxford University Press. Chris found us a pub to eat at called the Bookbinders. It was heaving - we were lucky to get a table, and we definitely put the average age up a bit, but they didn't seem to mind!
It was excellent food and a great atmosphere! And full of an enormous collection of stuff!!!
We passed some interesting buildings on our walk today, hidden behind walls quite often. What an extraordinary thing to put on top of the building!
The single plant covering this building seemed quite amazing, and it seems fantastic that it could successfully grow all from the single stem in very unpromising looking soil.
We are having a visit from Jonathan and his family tomorrow which will be great fun, I am sure, though the weather does not look very encouraging! It's really lovely to be able to moor in the middle of Oxford for free - at least for 2 nights. We might get charged £25 for staying a third night, but even if we do it's cheaper than car parking at £41 per day!
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