Oh So cold on the Napton Flight!

Knotts Bridge (130) to Napton, Oxford Canal, 6.5 miles 8 locks

The canopy had to come down this morning.. Vic is not used to skippering the boat let along with the canopy up, so we were open to the elements today.  I was on locking duty, and Vic was having an awful job getting No Problem into the locks with a high side wind to have to contend with.  I did feel awful sorry for him, and was glad that we had no onlookers today… not that there was much to look at, just there were plenty of choice words from Vic!!

That’s the way it goes sometimes, we could have stayed put, but the weathermen are not promising any different weather for the next week, so we may as well just wrap up warm and practice all the swear words!

You know even freezing cold days like today have their high spots… not the best of pics, but this is one I enjoyed today..

I think this is a buzzard.. whatever it was a very big bird indeed, and we enjoyed watching it circle above before settling in a tree some 50 yards away.  I was lucky to get a shot of this, throwing the tiller to Vic and grabbing the camera.. pity it was facing away from me.. no worry, made my day that!

We will stay here tomorrow though.. I am looking forward to a couple of friends popping in tomorrow afternoon, plus I will change the template on the blog here back to the way it was.  I changed it to an external linking system that automatically notes when any of the blog links has been updated, but it needs Active X switched on, and, fair enough it can be a security issue, and some people don’t have that switched on.  I note that Mark had to switch his on to see it, and Gillian is not seeing the links at all.  I don’t want people to switch that on just for this blog.  Hopefully will do that tomorrow.

I see the Inland Waterways Association are holding their 2007 Festival at St Ives on the Great River Ouse over in East Anglia.  I am very taken aback indeed!!.. I don’t know where they are going to put all the boats.. there is going to be a terrible tupperware conflict.. I can’t believe that it will work there.. half of the narrowboats built today will not go under the bridges on the middle levels for a start.. No Problem only just fits those bridges and she is a ‘low’ boat.. That has put paid to any plans of spending the summer of 2007 in East Anglia for us.