Oxford to Napton

The Oxford canal

Still heading for Crick in the spring of 2013 we joined the Oxford canal at its southern end in Oxford.  It was completed in 1790 and runs for 77 miles from Oxford to Hawkesbury in Warwickshire where it joins the Coventry canal.  It is a narrow canal so only one boat can enter each lock and boats wider than ours (6’ 10”) cannot use the canal.  There are 43 locks and many lift bridges; these bridges are very popular on this canal and if you look you’ll see them as you go up the M40 to Birmingham:

Consequently the bridge holes by locks can also be tight - this is Allen’s bridge at Allen’s lock near Little Heyford.

Joining the canal at Oxford

A tiny cut called Sheepwash Channel runs from the Thames under Oxford railway station and comes out at the first lock on the Oxford - Isis lock with its pretty iron footbridge.  It’s hard to believe this is the middle of a city.  Halfway along Sheepwash Channel you go past an old swing bridge that used to carry trains through Oxford. Just north of here the canal enters Jericho, a rather upmarket area of Oxford with some lovely moorings and pubs.

The trip

Oxford to Napton is 37 miles (by canal) and 38 locks.

Heading up to Banbury

We had glorious weather in April 2013 even though many mornings were still frosty.  No better way to start the day than sitting on deck with coffee watching the mist burn off and the frost on the bankside.  Mind you no better way to end the day than doing the same thing with wine like here at Aynho on 20th April.

The canal runs right through Banbury and a new shopping centre takes advantage of the canal unlike at Reading.  We were unlucky with pubs and only found naff ones!

Cropredy

Soon after Banbury the canal goes through Cropredy which is famous for the annual Fairport Convention festival (we came back for the festival in the summer).  Nice pubs in Cropredy and typical thatched Cotswold stone houses.  A new marina was under construction although it was nowhere near meeting the opening date shown here!

We went through some other pretty places:

Further north the canal enters Northamptonshire and we hadn’t realised how beautiful the countryside was in this county:

Oxford canal locks

Here are the 39 locks between Oxford and Napton junction.  Running from number 46 in Oxford to number 8 at Napton.

Locks 46 - 38

Locks 37 - 32

Locks 31 -26

Locks 25 - 20

Locks 19 - 14

Locks 13 - 8

On the move again

The first weekend of April 2013 was gorgeous, a complete contrast to the start of 2013.  We decided that our medium term goal was to get to Crick by the late May bank holiday.  Crick is in Northamptonshire and the marina there hosts an annual boat show.  Karen’s cousin (Dave) and his wife (Barbara) help friends at the show and we had agreed to meet up.  These friends of Dave and Barbara build narrow boats and exhibit one each year at Crick so welcome help showing punters round.  Dave and Barbara also own a narrow boat and were bringing it down to Crick from Cheshire so we thought it would be a great way to meet up.

Up the Thames from Reading to Oxford

We decided that the first leg would be to Oxford and we should do that over the weekend so set off from our moorings of four weeks at Frys Island in Caversham:

As you can see it was a beautiful day:

All the locks are manned between 9 and 5 other than at lunchtimes.  Outside these hours you have to operate the locks yourself.  Here are some of the locks between Reading and Oxford.

 

All locks on rivers have weirs to control the river flow and on the Thames tend to be very wide as in this one at Goring:

We cruised for ten hours on that Saturday - our first cruise for many months because of the 
awful winter and spring.  It was a great day: we saw the first butterfly of the year and Saints won. We had left red wine warming by the stove ready for our return from the Wagon and Horses at Culham where we had a well deserved beer or two:

On the Sunday we set out to complete the remainder of the trip.  We had a slight mishap at Abingdon just after this picture was taken:

I won’t say who was driving but in their defence the buoy marking the sandbank had come adrift.  We were well and truly stuck as we had been going at 5 knots (you are allowed to go faster on wide rivers than on narrow canals).  We called a rescue company but they couldn’t get out to us for a couple of days as they had two boats to rescue further up the Thames and there was a sunken narrow boat just north of Oxford that they would have to wait to be recovered.

In the end the guy on the red boat in the picture turned up and came over to drag us off backwards.  This was rather comical as he was obviously rather hung over and couldn’t work out why his boat would only turn one way - his anchor was down.  Anyway once that was sorted he soon had us moving again. Of course by that time there were plenty of locals capturing the antics on their phone videos.

Here are some of the bridges we went under that weekend:

And some of the places we passed on the way:

And some of the smart houses on the Thames: