Wormleighton

We remembered to put the clocks forward and I managed to light the Alde. The morning was bright, windy but not very warm, typically spring-like. We had a great trip along past Wigrams Turn to Napton. We followed a couple of boats up the flight, so our progress was steady but not fast. One of the pounds, by bridge 116, was very shallow so we stuck to the centre of the channel and trudged along slowly. It looks like somebody left a paddle open because further down the flight we had water cascading over the gates. The water buffalo we spotted in a field halfway up the flight some years ago are still there.

Lunch was at Marston Doles. This time I remembered how difficult was to take the turn out of the top lock. I used plenty of power and got round without any difficulty. In the past, I have been embarrassed here and had to push off the offside bank.

The journey around the “bends” was very good with plenty of water making taking the turns relatively simple. The sun shone on the Napton windmill made it visible for miles and I was aware at one point that it appeared on our left bow. The point is we were travelling south towards Banbury and Napton is to the north – all part of Mr Brindley’s contour following. We moored up (near bridge 130) by the radio mast that is visible for miles and from all directions as the canal twists around Wormleighton Hill. You get great uninterrupted vistas across the countryside from Wormleighton towards the north. This is the third time we have moored up here.



Wormleighton Radio mast

Again web access was rubbish, even worse than last night. For long periods I couldn’t even get a GPRS connection and when I did it took several minutes just to load a fairly standard page! I wish I hadn’t bothered trying.