It was dry but cloudy as we set off from Spiceball Park, leaving the friendly people of Banbury behind us, but after a short cruise through Castle Quay Shopping Centre, going under the lift bridge and down the lock, we stopped at the facilities below the lock to empty the unmentionable things that needed emptying, fill the mentionable things (water tank) that needed filling and dump the growing pile of wine bottles.
We were almost finished when another boat arrived from the opposite direction with a lady on the bow ready to alight and dump their rubbish prior to going through the lock. Getting into the spirit of cooperation that waterways users have, George offered to dump her rubbish for her (see above) while she worked the lock. She was obviously a little taken aback at this generous offer, but accepted gracefully and went straight into the lock while we set off towards Oxford.
Not too far on the rain set in for the day, so the gallant cap'n cruised on through the downpours while the crew stayed snug and warm inside.
To be fair, they did occasionally brave the great outdoors to help him with the locks:
Here they are, hard at work, discussing with the crew from another boat, the finer points of how to open a lock gate.
Wanda is not visible from the back of the boat where most of the blog photos are taken because, most days, she's strapped, semi-naked, to the bows as our figurehead. She's taking lots more (and better) photos from this position than the cap'n, but annoyingly, we don't have an xD memory card reader with us so can't put her photos in the blog.
It was noted by the crew that there weren't many (any) photos of all four of us so after we'd finished cruising for the day, Sir Charles attempted to set the camera up to take a photo on its own. It took at least four attempts to get the flash to fire, which may be a result of too many bottles of red wine!
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