Emergencies, shopping and BBQs.

 I spoke a little too soon when I said that there were no queues for the locks. At Slat Mill Lock south of Cropredy, BW decided to do some 'emergency' brickwork and there was a small disgruntled group of ten boats waiting to go through in our direction with a simlar number in the other. The workers seemingly didn't expect so many boaters to be around (quizzical look). I think some appalling BW management may have had a hand in this. We considered getting to the front by declaring a medical emergency as we were running short of alcohol but fortunately Lisa found a dusty bottle of something indescribable so all was well.

Disgruntled boaters

Two hours later we were through and on to Banbury which was a little bit of a surprise as the canal goes from rural tranquility to having heavily leaden shoppers tripping over your boat and waiting for Lisa to lower the mid town lift bridge so they can continue their retail therapy, back to rural tranquillity again all in the space of about twenty minutes. Did that really happen or did I doze off and have a nightmare.

You don't get these on the Ashby

The highlight of our Banbury excursion was watching the arrest of a cider drinking type beside our boat for the theft of a belt from the Blue Cross!!!, whatever that is. It was like being in one of those Real Life Cops With Cameras type shows. I was hoping we weren't going to be following the unfortunate cider drinker to the station as the police poured his bottle of White Lightning away stating that it was a non-drinking zone. We had several bottles of opened beer on the hatch and had consumed several before our arrival. With relief I then realised that we would be perceived as being middle class as I was attempting to wrestle 20 tons of badly behaving steel so those rules wouldn't't apply to us. Toodle pip. More Pimms anyone.

Someone mentioned that at Aynho there is a pig farm that you can pick up very good BBQ meat products for our evening fare. Fortunately we decided to use Morrisons instead and forgo the pleasure of meeting the unfortunate BBQ meat's live family. No idea where we are this evening but I can hear the M40 and Lisa snoring.

Another rubbish mooring