Date - 28 July 10 Day - Wednesday Start - 10 AM. Cropredy End - 5 30 pm Banbury
A very peaceful night last night with much better temperature and humidity range so we slept very well. Several boats had passed before we surfaced and all the boats around us had moved off. We set off at 10 am behind a Challenger boat that had moored ahead of us earlier this morning. They had a notice in the window offering a twelfth share for sale for £5000 pounds but the maintenance charge was £1200 per share, £14,400 per year to maintain a boat? We were in queues at every lock, with the one before Banbury being the slowest. We stopped at Sovereign Narrowboats to fill with diesel at 1-25 pm. but he was closed for lunch until 2 pm. so we had a sit down and a beer while we waited, at the moment he is charging 70 p lt. for his diesel which is the best price in the area, the only problem is catching him open, closes all day Friday Saturday and Sunday, also at 4 pm for the remaining days. Takes about an hour for dinner, he turned up at twenty past two today and doesn't open until 10 am in the morning. Once topped up with diesel we moved on to the centre of Banbury to top up with water, again we had to wait while a hire boat filled up, I think there was nearly as much water leaking from the hose connector as passing through it in to his tank. Then it was on a bit further to help keep Morrison's solvent, mooring on the fairly new piling opposite the foundry. As my back is playing up a bit we had to make two visits to the shop, the second for milk and beer. It was almost 5 pm before we were away again so we moored for the night on a short length of piling between the two lift bridges. See http://tinyurl.com/Harnser-s-route for our present location. You will find our latest position and all our past travels on our blog at http://nbharnser.blogspot.com/ -- Brian
