Return To Abingdon
We left the boat on the visitor moorings on Monday morning. Archie and I were back at the boat before noon on Wednesday, having dropped Sue at Tesco in Abingdon on the way. Another cab brought her and a big supermarket shop to the car park nearby an hour or so later, in time for lunch.
Having moored here on Sunday we had used up our three nights and so we were technically supposed to move on. However, there was plenty of space free here now and having walked up and checked with the Lockkeeper there were a couple of large boats on the mooring there, leaving little room for us. He also told me it was unlikely that the warden would be bothering to check boats that closely at the moment. We decided, therefore, to take the chance and stay a fourth night, giving us an opportunity for a brief look around Abingdon before leaving the next morning.
The Abingdon Visitor Information Centre proved far superior to that in Oxford, providing us with a couple of useful guides allowing us to take ourselves around key points of interest in the town in our own time, while providing interesting facts along the way. For example, the symmetry of the Abbey gateway, is fairly modern. The right hand arch replaced a porters lodge and was added in the nineteenth century to mirror the original fifteenth century pedestrian arch.
Abingdon Abbey Gateway
On Thursday morning, we set out from our illicit extended stay and headed upstream, rather than downstream, to go up through Abingdon Lock again. This was not because we enjoyed the lock so much, simply because all the services were sited above it. Here we found our old friends on "Barley Twist", who had met up with some of their family and were now heading back up to Oxford. Here we heard the news that one of the locks we intended to pass through further downstream, Day's Lock, had been out of action since the day before.
We decided to carry on down, regardless, so we winded the boat above the lock and set off down river once again.
Difficult Day's
As we headed down the river the weather, which had started out dull but dry and still, began to deteriorate. At Culham Lock we caught up with "Lazy Days" who lived up to their name in setting the lock and sauntering on towards Clifton Lock beyond. As we arrived at Clifton, in case we would do better to wait back here, we spoke to the lockkeeper at Day's Lock about the situation there and particularly available mooring above the lock. We were assured that, while the lock was still inoperable, there was room for us to moor up there so we carried on down in a steadily rising wind.
Obeying the signs to keep left and avoid the weir to the right at all costs, we rounded the large tree that obscured any view of the approach to find that there was no room on the landing there at all.
We made another call to the lockkeeper who told us we should moor up on the other side of the lock landing in the weir pool. Reversing out in what was becoming a bit of a gale had its challenges but nothing compared to the prospect of manoeuvring through the weir barrier. We considered trying to pin into the river bank but the water was shallow and we would have had difficulty getting in. That left us no choice but to head past the 'Danger' signs and the wreckage of a canoe fouled in the cables, then squeeze through the narrow gap, avoiding a large cruiser moored just beyond and a fallen tree in the middle of the pool, before turning round against the flow of water rushing down the weir and reversing onto the mooring pontoon.
Approaching Day's Lock Weir
View From Inside The Barrier
Somehow this was all accomplished without incident and we got a little help when the owner of "Kingfisher Too", who had got moored on the lock landing, came over and took a line for us to help pull us in the last few feet. The information he had was that the parts for the hydraulics were expected to be there first thing in the morning and we should be able to get going by Friday lunchtime. My suggestion that we could use the winding wheel to operate the lock by hand was pooh-poohed by all, so we resigned ourselves to the delay.
Our Final Resting Place
Next morning, the forecast was for even stronger winds and rain but at nine-thirty it was actually fairly fine and relatively calm. When we saw "Captain Grumpy" suddenly start up and head off back up river, leaving a space on the right side of the lock island, we decided we would go for it and hurriedly started the engine and threaded our way back out of the weir pool and around the trees to moor up in the queue. That was the only visible activity that morning, with no signs of engineers or parts, although contact with the lockkeeper still held out hope that they might arrive today.
Since we were stuck here, for now, we looked at the map. Although we seemed to be in the middle of nowhere the village of Dorchester (not that one), based on an old Roman town with a large abbey of its own, was just a mile away inland. We set out to explore and found a rather bigger and busier place than we expected.
Dorchester Abbey Gateway
It was really quite a pretty village, with some interesting architecture and we were able to loop back via a farm shop and café where we had an excellent cup of coffee.
Dorchester-On-Thames
Sadly, the weather broke down as we left there and we spent ten minutes huddled under a tree while a brief but furious downpour swept over us.
Arriving back at the lock we found "In A Minute", an enormous Dutch barge, moored up, abreast and on the outside of us and other boats waiting on the lock landing.
"In A Minute" - moored up later in Wallingford
However, there was still no sign of any engineers or parts for the repair, although there were a few Environment Agency personnel in evidence. When we asked for an update, imagine our surprise when they said they were going to try and wind us through after all. We asked no questions but prepared the boat for departure. The skipper of the Dutch barge was quick to assure us he intended to back off completely and let everyone who had been there first precede him into the lock. That wasn't enough to avoid being berated for having blocked her in by the elderly lady who was single handed on the narrowboat "Grayling" and who became quite a feature of our next couple of days.
We all managed to squeeze into the lock for what was billed as a 'trial run' of the manual winding process and happily watched the lockkeepers spinning the wheel. It was a lot of effort for them and took quite a while but it was successful and we were able to carry on down through one more lock at Benson before reaching our intended destination of Wallingford. There was a space available on the visitor mooring there and we leapt at it, ready to settle in for the weekend.
Wallingford Visitor Moorings
A Weekend In Wallingford
"Grayling" had come down just ahead of us and then turned around and moored up close to the bridge. The owner was an elderly lady called Anne. She had had someone helping her but when they were delayed at Day's Lock they had had to leave, planning to re-join her at Wallingford. We had spoken to her while we were waiting and she did seem a bit lonely and fidgety. There was never a time, while we were moored close together, when one or other of us would leave the boat and not find her out there and eager to chat.
Anne was pleasant enough in conversation but Sue had concluded from her manner when something went wrong or was not to her liking that she must have been an old-school teacher or headmistress in her past. After rebuking the skipper of "In A Minute" at Day's Lock she had then struggled to untie her lines and turned her attention to Sue, demanding loudly that she must drop everything and come and help her at once. This would have earned me short shrift but for her, Sue politely went over to help, only to then be shouted at for having put our lines over the top of hers. Since we had actually not done that at all, by the time Sue returned she was fuming!
We then followed "Grayling" down into Benson's lock where she again had difficulty managing her mooring lines and became tetchy, in the extreme, with those who were trying to help her. Her attitude of belligerent entitlement extended in all sorts of areas as she talked, including the mooring. It isn't free in Wallingford and the twelve pound fee has to be paid through a downloaded app that even we found to be hopelessly unintuitive. As she had no signal she had taken herself off to a pub to get and use the app but could not understand that each night had to be paid for separately. Her response was simply not to bother paying at all.
Her crew reported for duty on Sunday morning but we found her on the bank, fuming, because they had not parked in the car park she had intended and were now late getting to her. We could only hope they would not score any further black marks on their onward voyage as we feared a mutiny might ensue!
We had arrived on Carnival weekend so there were a lot of stalls and events going on during Saturday. It started grey and a bit damp but it gradually improved as I took Archie out for a walk in the surrounding countryside and by the time the parade started, it was a lovely hot, sunny afternoon. We were able to follow the history trail around the town, soak up the noise and bustle of the Carnival on the Kine Croft and explore the remains of the old castle and the traces of the moat and defences around the town.
Wallingford Church
We stayed a second night but on Sunday, the sixteenth of June, we headed off down towards Goring. We had intended to go right through to the other side of Goring Lock and some visitor mooring shown there. We stopped first above Cleeve Lock to get some water and while we were waiting we spotted a small, public mooring just below the lock. It was remote, in pretty scenery with plenty of sunshine and little likelihood of anyone else wanting to join us so, after just an hour cruising today, we dropped down the lock and tied up there.
Mooring Below Cleeve Lock
We did think we had got away with it but quite late in the evening, the lockkeeper returned home to his cottage and came across to collect the twelve pound mooring fee. Apparently, he had spent most of the day at Day's Lock helping a team to manually wind boats through the lock!
Going On To Goring
It was a pleasant walk from Cleeve Lock to Goring on a nice, sunny day so we went down and explored the village and a little of the surrounding area as well as getting some lunch.
St. Thomas of Canterbury, Goring
This is well-known known to be a very pretty area set in the Goring Gap, between the high ground of the North Wessex Downs and The Chilterns. There are, in fact, two villages, Goring and Streatley, technically in different counties, Oxfordshire and Berkshire but operating as, more or less, one interdependent entity. Most of the activity seems to be across the bridge on the Goring side. It was very busy with Sunday visitors, wandering around or listening to a band that was giving a recital by the Village Hall. It was a really classic summer Sunday afternoon scene.