Girls on top.

We left Banbury very early the first boat to move....bar one.

This is Charlie below, she is the owner of her own boat as a Live-aboard and is moving it off the River Nene where she has been troubled with flooding, to a new home down the Oxford canal and a new job.

I left David to practice being a single hander and went forward to open the lift bridge for Charlie (David too of course).

I have to say I was incredibly impressed with her handling of her boat as she manoeuvred it out into line to get through the lift bridge, it's a heavy boat and no "Cissy" buttons to help.

I saw her do an amazing ballet position to put the tiller at full stretch..... see below

Bish bash bosh up on the roof closing the lock gate with her stick after having hauled the boat through the gates with the centre line.

Gates closed, leaping about the place, mind your head!

Bye for now... Lovely folding tiller.

This is the ballet position adopted for tiller at full stretch.  A joy to behold.

By now I went back to WaL who was being watered up.  

There's nobody here but us chickens..... as the Muppet song goes.

So here we are passing the Banbury Meadows as I call them, we came down here as Rookies in April 2014  HERE  and they were working on this building site and you can see that hardly anything has happened.... 

In fact this field below was the one where we had moored up when asked to move in 2014, whatever drain laying or suchlike that was done has completely been buried.

Maybe they really mean it this time?  Anyway moving on around the corner was a piece of Lookalike France for you, 

The sun shone, the water glistened and all that was missing were Monet's Water Lilies.

The real thing, if you don't know it then google it, nearly as good as Hidcote!!

Here's Charlie making her way.  I helped her through this one as its much deeper 

Lovely stone bridge

Now these are the same willow tres that had been pollarded in 2014, I'm not a fan of willow trees.

King Sutton Church on a beautiful sunny morning.

Charlie was helped through here by David and I decided to take over helming a bit, another boat came up next then one arrived behind me in the queue and their two men went forward to help, the boat in the lock came up and I gathered my ropes and was just pushing off when the helpful men shut the gates in front of me...  I was laughing, they were a bit red faced, I sooooooo wanted to bring WaL into the lock without a bump no matter how small in front of these two men, but it wasn't to be....  just a kiss on the black as I like to say.

Kings Sutton Lock Cottage, new owners are doing work here so I look forward to seeing it later in the year.

Not sure whats afoot.

I had to resort to hat so as not to be blinded by the sun.

Glorious.

Beautiful.

M40, super smug being under it.

A small item of Farming News, this first shot is a nice big bald patch that David thinks will be a result of the wet wet wet spell we all enjoyed so much.

and this one below is what happens when you miss a bit during spraying, nice and public, other farmers could well be smirking at you.

WaL approaching Aynho Lock on the tidal stretch of the South Oxford.

Love these old gates all along here.

More Girl Power today, a CART lady driving at Somerton Deep Lock

It had already been decided long before we arrived here that David would do this lock, I really struggle with opening it.

The cottage stands so proud of the lock but is almost hidden when you move away

I suppose that chimney is straight?  The little wee window is to see whats coming.

Long way down.

Somerton Meadows, our intended destination and never have I seen it looking so very very beautiful.  We are going to stop here certainly for the whole weekend.

Supper was steak and wedges and a rather fine cabernet.