Wonderfully remote in the rain...

Moored Near Kirklington, Oxford Canal

So I mentioned yesterday that we needed rain.. OK, OK, so today we got it!  It’s given me a chance to catch up with writing up some of the scores of walks that I have been on.  I hope to publish them all some day, but then I really do need to stop walking and start writing!!

I am very pleased to see that Per Angusta now has a blog as well as the excellent website which, in particular, has the most excellent ‘boat build’ with some very good information as to how to go about checking out each stage with a surveyor right here.

I want to also mention Paul’s Waterway Routes website.  Paul is a frequent visitor to No Problem, and I am delighted to see this website come to life.  I have been watching ‘the build’ of this for quite a few weeks now, and it is looking good so far!

Tomorrow I think we are on the move.. we have a very special item onboard No Problem at the moment….

This is The Canal Traveller Travel Bug in front of a map of Banbury!  No is OK, I haven’t gone mad.. this is something Ann and I found in a geocache in Cropredy a couple of weeks ago.  It has a Inland Waterways Plaque from 2004 at Burton on Trent and one of Preston Brook from 2005.  Geocaching.. I described that back in January…

“To fully understand you do need to study the geocachers site, but a quick description of a geocacher is one who trapses over the countryside with given clues to a secret hiding place of a box or other receptacle containing goodies which can be swapped for goodies of your own.. there is also a log book and pencil to enter your visit.  Sometimes there are ‘travel bugs’ which, as the name suggests, like to travel to other places, they sometimes have a mission too like wanting to visit a certain county”

Well this particular ‘travel bug’ has a mission.. To get from the last Inland Waterways Festival at Preston Brook to the Inland Waterways Festival at Beale Park this August.

So tomorrow we will put ‘The Canal Traveller’ bug into a box or ‘cache’ to describe it correctly.  There is a web page where it’s progress can be monitored here.  We will update that page when we have dropped it off.  I do hope another narrowboater picks it up again and takes it towards the Thames… we are heading north again now!