Oxford Canal. Pigeon Lock to Shipton Weir.

While we were at Pigeon lock we got on with hand rail preparation and undercoating, and we scraped all the tatty looking non-slip coating off the gunwale on the towpath side. We also drove about 1,000 miles in the car.

On a whistle-stop tour of England we first went to Lincolnshire for a party, collected some willow from our old house and got back to the boat at 4am. 5 hours later we went to Mum & Dad’s for their wedding anniversary. The next day we drove to Brize Norton to meet Chloe who was coming back from Afghanistan and take her to Frankie’s. That night we all stayed at Frankie’s house, Chloe left for Birmingham in the morning and we went to Karen’s to do some work on her car. After tea we came home again, but not for long. Our next excursion was to Chesterfield for a doctor’s appointment. (We’re registered there as it’s where our postal address is) Dave is diabetic and we needed to get him back into the system of regular blood tests and check-ups. The doctor was very obliging and booked him in the very next day. In the afternoon we went over to Buxton to see Wiltz & Annie who very kindly put us up overnight so we didn’t have to drive back again. We finally got back to the boat on Thursday night.

On Friday we got up late and didn’t go anywhere all day.

On Saturday we had to go to Southam for a dentist appointment; there was a 50’s “retro” celebration on in the town, so we rang Kim and Luke and they met us there. It was well attended with lots of cars and bikes to look at and we had a good time. In the afternoon they came back to the boat for tea and the inevitable sleep over and on Sunday we crossed the canal and had a walk through Kirtlington Quarry Nature Reserve

followed by a visit to the fabulous “Jane’s Teas” for a slice of home-made cake and a pot of tea on a sofa in the trees overlooking the canal.

It’s the most bizarre, eccentric, wonderful café in the world, and so, so English.

Sadly it only opens on Sundays, and next Sunday is the last one this year, but next summer, if you want a really jolly afternoon in the Cotswolds, go to Kirtlington, just north of Oxford, stand on the village green, turn round three times and click your heels together. Then go down Mill lane.

We’d got a growing list of noisy jobs to do; chain-sawing, sanding, drunken singing etc. and Pigeon Lock is near some houses, so after much discussion and changing our minds several times, we finally decided that the best plan would be thus: First thing Wednesday – go to Thrupp, wash out, fill up, turn round. Come back to Shipton weir and moor just by the lock. Do all the noisy stuff on one side, go through the lock, turn round in the river, come back through the lock and do all the noisy stuff on the other side. That should take the best part of a fortnight, and we should have stripped both gunwales back to bare steel, given them 5 coats, and have a red border round where the panels are going to be. In other words, all the red bits will be finished just before the weather makes painting impossible. We know it seems like a backwards way of going about things, doing all the fiddly bits first, but the idea is that the red bits – hand rails, borders & gunwales - all get a rough painted edge, then, when we come to painting the main panels and the roof next year, we simply mask off the red bits (which by then will be totally cured) and do a quick, shiny job without any fiddly stuff.

The first part almost went to plan, the only snag was that the last week in September has been so glorious that in the afternoon the side facing the sun got too hot to touch, let alone paint.

Here are some pictures of an idyllic autumn day boating on the Oxford.

Oxford Canal. Upper Heyford to Pigeon Lock.

As we continue our journey south towards Thrupp, where we’ll be turning round, we can fully understand why so many people count the South Oxford Canal as one of their favourites. Although it is fairly busy with several hire bases nearby, and boats from the Thames, Kennet & Avon and other southern waterways going north and back home again, it still manages to be quiet, peaceful and far, far from the madding crowds. It feels like a well-kept secret; we’re in the middle of commuter-belt Cotswolds country where you can’t move for barn conversion architects, jig-saw photographers and artisan thatchers and you never get much change from a small fortune, and here we are with our little house, picking blackberries. It’s idyllic, if a bit surreal.
We did the bit from Upper Heyford to Lower Heyford twice; the first time with Wiltz, Annie, Kim & Luke, when we turned round and came back, and the second time on our own when we kept going to Pigeon Lock which is where we are now.

We’ve finally got some gloss on the bow. We went to see John & Jaq’s boat in dry dock at Braunston; they're re-painting it, blacking it and having new sign-writing. All in 11 days!

We came home inspired. The next day Dave set to with masking tape

and by the afternoon he had two coats of super shiny black paint on the front end.

Next on the painting front are the hand-rails. Ann-Marie has started stripping them back to bare metal

after which they’ll get some Red Oxide, 2 undercoats and 2 coats of red gloss. At the same time we’re going to paint the 1” red border round the sides.

There’ve been quite a few trees blown down recently. When that happens the B.W. contractors turn up with chain-saws, clear the canal and the towpath and leave all the wood in a heap for boaters to take away. It’s mostly willow, which burns quick, but it’s free, splits easy, dries out fast and there’s plenty of it. We’ve emptied out one of the front lockers and filled it with the seasoned logs that we’ve been collecting on our travels

all the new stuff is going on the rack on the roof.

We began this blog without any idea if the journey we hoped were setting out on was even going to start. "Dave & Ann-Marie’s Transition from Bricks and Mortar to Life on a Narrowboat" not only started, but has been a fantastic, round the world roller-coaster adventure. So is it over? Well we’ve “Transitioned” (or whatever the past tense is) from house to boat, but the roller coaster is still trundling along the track with no end in sight. True, it’s going a lot slower these days and there is time to smell the roses, stuff a mushroom, or make a mortise & tenon joint. Or, more to the point, get out and have a proper look at the country we call home. And that's one of the main reasons we did this. Before we bought the boat, this beautiful part of England that we’ve been slowly meandering through was just a blur of scenery between Northampton and the M25. If the last 5 months are anything to go by, our boating life is going to be just as much a voyage of discovery as all our travels before-hand.

So no, it’s not over. We’ll re-write the profile and change the sub-title to reflect what we’re doing now, but one thing we’ve learnt from all this is that we’ll never, ever be listless.

Oxford Canal. Upper Heyford

We’re still at Allens Lock at Upper Heyford. This is the first lock that anyone hiring a boat from Oxforshire Narrowboats gets to, so it’s often quite exciting.

The big news is that Ken has got a new home. A lovely couple called Emma & Richard won him on Ebay, and are taking him home with them on Saturday. We had a very pleasant time with them on Wednesday and we hope they’ll have as much fun with him as we did.

Thank-you Ken, you did good.

On the boat we’ve put a pane of glass in the cratch board

The next thing is a canvas cover over the front to make a very useful welly-taking-off area. There are a couple of places on the net that do cratch covers to order; i.e. you send them your measurements and they make the cover and send it back. Trouble is, every boat is different and we’re not entirely convinced that without actually seeing it themselves the result would be as good. They are considerably cheaper though, and the measurements that you send them are probably exactly the same ones as more expensive tailor-made firms would take, and they probably do a sterling job and if we send them some photos and talk to them on the phone…… Anyway, we’re going to look into it. The bow is masked up for painting, we're going to have to decide on what sort of lettering we want before much longer. At the back end we've stained the roof boxes and finished fixing the solar panels to the top of the rear one. There are hasps and staples on all four sides so that it can be lifted and pointed towards the sun in any direction while still being padlocked to the boat. It took a lot of thinking to end up with something pleasingly simple.

We had a walk into Lower Heyford on Tuesday; it’s only a couple of miles down the tow-path, but for the first time this year we had to get dressed up in woolly jumpers hats and and coats. We really enjoyed the feeling of being wrapped up against the elements and the hawthorn berries, rose hips, elderberries and hazelnuts that we found on the way only added to our inner autumnal glow. We missed autumn last year – we didn’t leave Portugal till the end of November, so we’re looking forward to kicking leaves around, wearing scarves and gloves and coming home to a cosy boat with a homemade casserole bubbling away on the log burner. Mind you, while we were sitting in a tea shop by the station the wind picked up, the heavens opened and lounging about in a beach bar in the tropics sipping Pina Coladas suddenly seemed like quite a nice idea.

Oxford Canal. Nells Bridge to Upper Heyford.

Beautiful though it was, we pulled the pins from Nells Bridge on Bank Holiday Monday and made our way to Upper Heyford, which, it turns out, is just as lovely, if not more so.

Dave’s daughter Frankie has been staying with us on the boat over the bank holiday; Harry has been mechanic-ing at the 2CV 24hr endurance race at Snetterton, and it’s been wonderful having her aboard.

We stopped at Aynho Wharf for water and just happened to find a group of our mates having their lunch at the pub. It wasn’t quite the coincidence it sounds like; they’d been at the 2CVGB National at Whitney and we’d arranged to have them as crew for a day. Coops, Carole, Autumn, Tristan and Nikki squeezed in, making a crew of 8!

Our trip rook us through Sommerton Deep lock which, as its name implies, is, er, deep. 12’ deep to be exact. Locks are usualy 6 or 7’ ish; this is like something out of Mordor!

You go down and down and then down some more. The bottom gate is huge and it took all our crew to open it. Nikki and Autumn had a walk along the towpath and collected a bag full of elderberries to make wine with. Talking of making things – Ann-Marie and Frankie collected and made a delicious batch of Hedgrow Jelly. We’ve tried it in pancakes, on scones and in sandwiches; no faults so far but we feel compelled to carry on in the name of research.

We’ve given Ken a freshen-up, moved him down to Upper Heyford and put him back on Ebay. Someone out there must want him. We’re going to Shackerstone Festival this weekend in him with a “For Sale” notice in his window. Fingers crossed, eh?

Oxford Canal. Nells Bridge

We moved on from Cropredy, had a couple of nights Banbury town centre, left Kim and Luke boat-sitting while we went to Frankie’s for her birthday and are now at Nell’s Bridge, just north of Aynho.
This is the view.

The M40 is just over there; we can hear it but it's not too bad. There’s a rare breed pig farm on the other side of the cut that sells eggs and sausages – we might be here for a while. There’s also a big secluded layby next to the bridge where we’ve parked our car and Ken the campervan, which we thought we’d sold but haven’t. We’re busy doing a tidy-up job on him and the layby is perfect.
Aboard Legend we now have these

And these

The idea behind the solar panels being on a box lid is that they can tilt in any direction to make the most of the sun and still be locked to the box, which in turn is bolted to the roof. It’s a work in progress at the moment, but it does look good and has interested several other boaters.
When we moved from Banbury, Dave’s sister Anne came to stay for a night. (It’s the first time she’s been aboard; we think she’ll be back.)

Kim and Luke were visiting again that day and Coops just happened to be in the area, so by the time we got here there were six of us. We don’t need a better excuse than that to get the barbeque out. It was a beautiful evening; after dinner we had marshmallows then the barby turned into a little camp fire.

Sitting beside our boat, with our friends, round a campfire. We really suffer for our art, don’t we?

Oxford Canal. Cropredy.

France was a hoot! There were over 7,000 cars at the meeting with all the associated chaos that you’d expect. On Sunday we moved Legend down to the 48hr moorings opposite Cropredy Coal Wharf so it was easy for Dad and the kids to come on board and get settled in. We did a final run-through of all the systems then, as there are only 4 beds in the boat, went and slept in Poubelle in the car park. On Monday we came back to the boat and crewed while Dad steered through Cropredy and, after finding a wasp’s nest in the bank at the first place we tried, hastily moved on a bit and pinned on the 14 day moorings. That way they were only a short walk from their car and could either stay put for a week or go further down the cut towards Banbury. At about 11am we said goodbye to our family and our home and headed off to Dover, Dunkerque and beyond.

Reversing the route we’d taken in Ken when we left France in December, we stopped for the night in a picnic area near Rouen, then on Tuesday had an early start and got to Salbris - which is about 50kms south of Orleans - around lunch time.

We finally got into the meeting site at 8.30pm; everyone who was there has got horror stories about the queuing, and by the sound of things we were quite lucky. We went through the gate just after they opened the overflow field and got a very nice pitch, albeit a half hour walk from the main event. Once Poubelle was in she stayed put till Sunday; the little town was pretty well grid-locked most of the week.

7,000 2CVs. If you say it quick enough you can almost get away with it. The site was vast; we walked round for 5 days and still didn’t see half of them.

You’ve got to hand it to the French though; we trebled the population of Salbris for a week but the Super-U next door to the site never ran out of bread, milk, beer, or anything else for that matter, including frozen 2L water bottles for your cool box. There was a baker on site, plenty of food stalls, kid’s entertainment all day long, a very well presented Deux Chevaux museum - including several early prototypes and the last cars off the French and Portuguese production lines - and more spare part sellers than you could shake a starting handle at. And of course the cars were amazing; the effort people put in and the lengths they’ll go to for both authenticity and individuality is astounding.

On top of it all the sun shone and by Sunday we were well fed, well tanned and well knackered from all the walking.

Despite planning to leave just after lunch on Sunday, we finally pulled out at 9.30pm. No queues this time, just us not wanting to leave. And it was Tristan’s birthday tea and it would have been rude to go without having cake.

We got back to the picnic site at Rouen at 2am, had 4 hours kip then shot back for the ferry. We were back on Legend at tea-time on Monday. Perfik.

While we were away our relief crew had been having fun; they’d been into Banbury, turned, come back up to Cropredy, washed and re-filled then carried on up through the locks to the winding hole near Claydon where they turned again before coming back down to Broadmoor lock, which is where they were when we came back. And we’re still here. It’s a lovely spot and round here this close to Cropredy Festival is not a good time for trying to find somewhere else to moor. By the way, if anyone would like to come and visit us while the festival is on (or at any other time, of course!) we’d love to see you; we’re only a mile north of it.

In the week since we got back our mates John and Jac have moored up behind us again. Not happy enough with their lovely new engine, they’ve now got big plans for new windows and paint job. Some people just don’t know when to stop.

Dave’s been taking the flooring up at both ends. Just before we bought Legend, on the advice of a surveyor, it had an 8’ long plate welded to the edge of the base opposite the bathroom. This was because an ultra-sound scan showed the steel in that area to be unacceptably thin. The culprit was thought to be corrosion from the inside, but as the floor doesn’t have inspection hatches it was never investigated. That and the lean to the port side have been niggling at us since we bought it, so it’s now got a 2’ wide removable floor section under the new step across the whole front of the saloon where easy ballast trimming can be carried out. Also, there is significantly less rust, 4 fewer paving slabs, and a healthy dose of Waxoyl under the floor from the kitchen to the back down the port side corridor where the over-plating is.

It now sits level in the water without 4 scrap batteries and a 56lb weight in the corner of the well deck. Although there was a lot of rust under the floor at the back and evidence of an inch or so of water at some time, it’s now completely dry, so whatever caused the leak has been fixed. Finding it dry was good, we know we’ve still got to get to the rest of the floor under the bathroom and the bed and do the same thing, but there’s no urgent rush now. At sometime we’re going to re-fit the bathroom – lower the bath and re-tile – and we’ll probably do the whole lot in one go. The ballast that went back in is sitting on lengths of twin-&-earth cable; cheap, inert and keeps the slabs from direct contact with the steel.

While Dave had the floor out we got another little sneak into Legend’s chequered past. There are the remains of engine mounts under the floor under the bed. That would explain the side hatch being where it is; it once had a forward engine and probably a boatmans cabin where the engine room now is. Curiouser and curiouser, although it’s now powered by an air-cooled Lister, there are two redundant skin tanks (boat radiators) on either side of the stern. All this points to 3 significantly different engines in 20 years. Hmmm, much chin stroking.

Ann-Marie has finished the saloon curtains and they look beautiful.

She’s now started on the bedroom ones and Dave is using the old army pillow-case ones to clean the Waxoyl off everything.

We’ve bought a new car! Well, obviously not brand new. A red Fiat Punto, nicely un-remarkable and un-noticeable. We’ll be a lot happier leaving it in lay-bys and car parks than we have been with Poubelle, who we’ve sold to a friend of ours in the club. It’s going to be the first time in twenty odd years that one or the other (mostly both) of us hasn’t had a 2CV based car and there is no doubt that we’ll miss her. Why can’t we keep her? Here on the Oxford it’s very pleasant and gentle and if that’s all we were doing it would be OK, but our plans are for the whole system which will take us to places where, sooner or later, Poubelle would be a target. A non-descript run-of-the-mill eurobox can sit on the curb side somewhere for a few days without attracting attention, and even if it does get damaged it won’t be the end of the world. We’ve been over it no end of times and we always come to the same conclusion. Bye-bye Poubelle, it’s been wonderful.

Oxford. Claydon

We would say that life has returned to normal since the wedding, but as we’re still finding out what normal consists of we’re not sure if it has.

We’re off to France in a week. While we’re away Ann-Marie’s parents are going to stay on the boat for a week with Lauren & Ben so we’ve been trying to get all the outstanding jobs done. Dave has been super busy; the engine vent is on and working,

the new sideboard is nearly finished,

the side doors are lined inside

and filled and sanded down outside, there’s black undercoat on the whole front end,

the bilge has been cleaned out, the weed hatch has been opened up, painted and re-sealed and he’s had the side cover off the engine, made a Weetabix gasket for it

and stopped it leaking oil. Ann-Marie’s been just as busy turning one pair of big curtains from a charity shop into four pairs of boat curtains.

After lots of discussion, several sketches and a blazing row, we finally decided on a paint scheme. Something like this,

but with cream instead of white. Very FMC. We went over to Midland Chandlers at Braunston and spent £120 on paint; the sad part is that we’ll probably need about twice that much by the time we’ve finished but there’s no point getting it all at once, it’s going to be a good six months before we need any more. While we were there we just happened to bump into John and Jac who were moored there while they picked up their new cooker. They've got their new engine in, and lovely it is too - so quiet! While they were in dry dock they had the bottom blacked; it's all very exciting! they gave us and our paint a lift back to the car park. We love this canal life, there’s always time and an excuse for a cup of tea.

Something else we’ve decided is that we’re going to get a pair of folding bikes. Having the bike rack on the back of the boat is not ideal; it’s a real pain getting them on and off and they’re vulnerable stuck out there. We’ve scraped them on a couple of lock walls and Dave’s bike has a buckled wheel from an over excited hire boater hitting it. The new bikes (when we get them) are going in a new roof box (when we’ve made it) so they’ll stay safe and out of the weather. We’re going for aluminium which will mean they’re not only easier to ride but also easier to get on and off the boat. Click here and here for the sort of thing we're looking at.

Oh look, something else on the list.