It was a cloudy start to the day in Abingdon. The weather forecast for today indicated that it'd be sunny from 10am but the sun didn't materialise until about 4.30pm. Like the sun, I had a bit of a lie-in this morning as I starting the walk from home rather than having to drive to the start. So I started walking just before 10am.
I'd done the walk from Abingdon to Oxford before. I spotted a kingfisher (no photo) and a couple of herons (but it could have been the same one that had repositioned itself upstream whilst I wasn't looking).
I was plased to get to Oxford 'cos it meant I was on new territory: I hadn't walked along the Thames Path west of Folly Bridge. It was lots of posh housing followed by some dodgy bits of grassland followed by an industrial estate or two. I decided to go off my route and aim for The Perch at Binsey for lunch and got there at 1.50pm 10 minutes before I knew that their kitchen would close. The place was full of kiwis and an enthusiastic talkative eye-contact young barman who must have been on the super-advanced customer-services course: he should have been working for the tourist board. The beer wasn't that great either.
After lunch I walked back down the Thames Path to the very start of the Oxford Canal.
The afternoon's walk along the Canal was facinating. There were quite a few boats on the move. Most of them were going in the same direction as me. I was travelling faster then the boats to begin with because they had to go slow past all the moorings. The moorings were interesting as many of them were permanent, many of them had decided to adopt a different lifestyle. many of them looked very poor. There were two silly locks, silly because with both of them the height gained was only 3feet 6inches.
I chatted to a few boat owners/hirers as they worked their way through the locks. At one lock I helped the owner of his boat do the locks. And later I did the lift bridge for this boat as it's a real pain to have to stop to drop someone off and then stop again to pick them up again. They been on this boat for a month or so: tomoroow they will be dropping their boat off at its permanent moorings which is at Heyford. And that's where I finish walking tomorrow. He reckoned he would see me tomorrow. So they must be mooring somewhere close to where I finished walking today.
Tonight my calf muscles are really sore. Because of the visit to the pub, I may have done an extra 3 miles together, and so that means 15 miles. Silly! And I am shattered. I hope things will be OK in the morning.
Here is a link to today's photos.
Images produced from the Ordnance Survey Get-a-map service.
Images reproduced with kind permission of Ordnance Survey
and Ordnance Survey of Northern Ireland.