Down the Thames

Up at the crack of dawn and ready for the off just after eight.

It was a delightful, sunny day as we passed through Oxford - the main hazard was to avoid all the rowers!

The journey was uneventful and only a few of the locks were manned - the rest self-service. Below Abingdon on the reach to Culham Cut there were even more rowers out. Just below the main bridge at Abingdon we felt a hard bump which turned out to be an upturned green marker buoy, drifting down river - except that the only part above the water was barely noticeable.

Culham lock was annoying - it said that on public power it takes 20 minutes to fill! (In fact it was over 25) Note: the Thames locks on 'public power', that is when no lock keeper is in attendance, draw the upper paddles slowly in case there is a boat in the lock. For whatever reason, these were designed to be very slow indeed.

Although there was a colder breeze in the early part of the afternoon, towards evening the sun came back and it was still a pleasant pre-spring day.
 
By the time we reached just above Cleeve lock it was half past five so we decided to find a mooring rather than risk going through the next two locks for the mooring below Goring. However, the bank looked good, but the depth of water was not too great and we needed the gangplank to establish contact with land!