Date - Friday 2 November 2007 Start - 10 am Somerton Lock End - 5.30 Cropredy Lock Just as we were about to leave at 10 am this morning a BW hydraulic crane barge came the other way giving a very nice reflection as it came towards us. We travelled up the canal without incident until we reached Aynho Weir Lock, firstly we had problems emptying the lock due to the amount of water coming in around the top gate and once in we could not close the bottom gate leaving about a 6" gap. We opened it up and backed Harnser over the cill and had a poke around with the boat hook followed by the "Seasearcher" magnet which pulled up some very shiny crunched up metal that looked like stainless steel but was still magnetic. We tried the gate again with no luck and continued poking about. By now another boat had turned up to watch but didn't start offering advice, I went down with the magnet again and pulled a large forged nail up, this must have been on the cill because once this was out the gate shut. We let the other boat come in beside us and locked up. At Nell Bridge lock the top offside paddle would still not close fully which gave bit of a problem open the bottom gate. Once through it was plane sailing all the way to Cropredy where we came across John Forth moored for the night, as the diesel place in Banbury had been closed (only open Mon-Turs 10-4) we took 150 lts at 57 p/lt. from John. I have never seen the moorings at Cropredy so empty with hardly anything on the designated 48 hr moorings, in the past these have always been almost full of long term moorers. We then moved onto the waterpoint and topped up with water before going up through the lock in the dark to moor for the night at 5.30. -- Brian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
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