It rained all day on
Friday and it was a real struggle to get Buddy to have a decent walk. He dawdled and turned back to the boat at
every opportunity. I must admit it wasn’t
much fun so we ended up doing very little and staying in most of the day.
Birds are well into their
mating calls now and there is a particular moorhen that spends most of its time
in the hedge by the towpath next to us.
It seems to be calling incessantly and I’m surprised it’s not hoarse.
On Saturday we took the
train to Oxford as Matthew had come over from Norway as he had been selected
to take part in the annual Bumps races.
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Buddy getting excited as
he knew he was getting a train ride
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The Bumps are races where
rowing boats (he was in the eights) are let off at intervals and the basic idea
is that if you bump/touch the boat in front then you move up a place in the
standings. Matthew did a placement at
Green Templeton college in the summer and rowed for them then hence being selected
now. During the week they had bumped
other colleges but when we watched they neither bumped nor were bumped.
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A happy crew after their
Saturday afternoon race
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Proud mum
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The forecast was for rain
all day on Sunday and I drove to Fenny Compton marina in the morning to get
some engine oil whilst Karen did some work.
I had a frustrating and fruitless journey. Firstly I had forgotten that the Warwick half
marathon was on so had to find a tortuous route through the country lanes to avoid
the congestions on the main roads. When I arrived at the
marina I found the chandlery was closed; the web site failed to mention that it
only opens on Sundays in the season. My
fault I know as I should have rung first.
Fortunately the rain
stopped after lunch so we thought we might have a cruise up the Grand Union to
Knowle as we were still prevented from going any closer to Stratford due to the
lock closures. Firstly we needed water
but we hadn’t realised how windy it was though and it was quite a struggle to
reverse up a lock to get to the water point.
By the time we had taken on water the wind had really got up so we
decided to go back to our mooring spot as it isn’t much fun cruising in strong
winds.
Although it was windy it
was nice and bright and we had a good walk to Lowsonford and back through a
couple of other villages.
They finished erecting the
marquee in the field opposite us on Friday but there was no activity over the
weekend. We are now assuming that ‘the
event’ will be next weekend.
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Erected but empty marquee
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