Thursday 16th
July
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| Hi i'm aerial gnome!! |
We decided to chug off early today to get through the lift
bridge and lock in the town before it got too busy, so we set off at 8am!! for
our epic journey from where we were moored to the 14 day moorings just after
Bridge 168, all of about 1 mile!!
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| Going through the centre of Banbury |
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| Approaching lift bridge |
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| In lock by shopping centre |
We chugged past the Sovereign Narrowboats and were soon at
the lift bridge which is right by the Castle Quays shopping centre. A chap called Colin we have got friendly with
and has a really cute dog called Toby was just opening the swing bridge, we
went through and I shouted to him that when he goes through with his boat, I
would close it. I shut the bridge and
went to help him through the lock which is just after the bridge. Kev came down and helped as well and then it
was our turn, we filled the lock and Kev brought the boat in and soon we were
down and out the lock. We stopped for
water below the lock, then chugged on down the canal and moored up not far from
Bridge 168. You can stay in these moorings
for 14 days, so we are going to stay until Monday.
There was a small market in the town today, so we walked up
there and had a look around. We had a
coffee sat by the canal watching a few boats go by, then we had a look around
Banbury Museum, it is a really good museum telling the history of Banbury and
also the canal and Tooley’s Boatyard.
We
went over to Tooley’s boatyard and had a look around the Chandlery and there is
a bit of a museum in a back room with old tools and the history of the boatyard
and old machinery, really interesting.
We walked back to the boat and just chilled out. We are off to Oxford tomorrow by train, so we
are looking forward to that.
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| Tooley's Historic Boatyard |
Boo! It's no fun if you don't do the lift bridge & lock when there are masses of tourists & shoppers there to get in the way. Are the 14 day moorings the far side of the bridge? Don't remember ever seeing many boats moored there 'back in our day'.
ReplyDeletePS have you checked out the cafe in the arts center opposite Tooleys yet? They used have really nice cakes.
I didn't want to make a fool of myself, I do that enough times already ha ha! There are 14 day moorings around the corner below the lock and you can moor almost up to the long term moorings just before winding hole, there are several other boats here as well as us and its a bit more open in and more like in the country, but it is only a five to 10 minute walk back to the town. We have checked out the cafe opposite Tooleys, the cookies were really nice.
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