Date - 25 November 06 Day - Sunday Start - Cropredy End - Napton During our 2 hour cruse yesterday or plans changed slightly, Connie decided that she would like to stay onboard until we reached Napton as opposed to jumping ship at Cropredy and hat we would all go to the Brasenose Arms in Cropredy for a meal on the Saturday evening. As it was Saturday we set off early and walked up from the cut avoiding as many puddles as possible. When we arrived at the pub the front door was locked but 4 regulars had just turned up and they lead us round to the back door and into the restaurant where I enquired if they had a table for three. Why do they always ask you if you have booked at this point, if I had booked I wouldn't have asked if they had a table free. Anyway they didn't have a table but said we could eat in the bar but it might be a bit smokey, we retraced or steps out of the restaurant, round by the toilets and in through the unmarked door into the bar. It wasn't a bit smokey, you could hardly breath it was so thick, so we decided to give it a miss and go else where. We walked through the Church yard to the Red Lion only to find they were closed for the night for a private party. Luckily for us Connie's car was at Cropredy so she drove us to the Wharf at Fenny where we enjoyed a very good meal, by far the best we have ever had there. They had a very varied menu with lots of fish dishes and Connie and I had baked cod with ginger and peppers while Diana had duck with 5 spices, but before the main course was served they brought us a dish of Prawn Crackers and 3 very small glasses of fruit punch. As appearers to be the norm this trip it pored down with rain overnight but today was fine and sunny, even if the wind was a bit cool. We set off at 9am and made very good progress, The water level in the canal was down a bit compared with Thursday but the level in the fields was up. We met one boat at the top of the Claydon flight heading back from Fenny to Clattercote Wharf. A bit further along there was a sheep in the cut, she had managed to get her head and fore legs on the bank but couldn't pull her back end up due to the weight of water in her fleece. Luckily the water was deep enough for me to get the bow of Harnser against the edge of the field so Connie could jump ashore and pull the poor old girl to safety and within a couple of seconds she had got back onto her feet and was heading up the field with her friends. Connie had done her good deed for the week! We carried on back to the moorings where we found a better level of water than when we left and moored Harnser up at 3 o'clock. We felt that this was quite good going and over the two days we had done Banbury to Napton in just under 8 hours with about half the locks against us. -- Brian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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