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Not a bad stop.

Close to the amenities.

I tend to moor away from the road, probably 2 min walk up the towpath which suits me better.

You get better solar, the mobile signal is better and you don’t get intrusions from the odd idiot coming over the bridge beeping their horn.

As I wake up, I can look out across the field.

The sound of the trains are blocked by the industrial units which stand between me and the dual railway tracks.

Moved up

I moved slightly up, by about 14m. The sound of the trains woke me up. It was only the length of the boat. When you enter into ‘line-of-sight’ of the trains, you get all the noise.

People say you get used to the sound of trains. I’d rather not have it in the first place.

I’m now here behind the sheds and I can’t hear a thing apart from the odd noisy duck.

Although I get a tad less solar, it’s worth it.

Mooring at Souldern wharf

There’s one more stop about a mile south from Aynho. It’s close to the village of Souldern down a windey farmers lane.

Walking down the canal, I took these pictures.

It has fairly good reception. It’s not too close to the railway, although like my mooring here, the lines are interrupted by some farming sheds which cuts out most of the noise.

I quite fancied this mooring, as there is a high amount of solar visibility, reducing the amount of time you’re having to start your engine on the cloudier days.

In anticipation of making this my next stop, I dropped past in my car on the way back from work this morning, just to access the lane and see what it was going to be like.

River of cow poo

Much to my disappointment, when I got to the parking closest to this Souldern Wharf mooring spot, the path down to where I had planned to moor was about a 5 minute walk.

Not only that, the walk was interrupted by a lagoon of cow poo as so often happens on lanes where the only access is to a farm.

Much too deep to walk across in anything but boots, and effectively putting an end to my plans of making my next stop off Souldern Wharf.

Looks like I’m back off up to the Pig Place.

River in flood

Currently, the Cherwell is still in a kind of a flood mode where it meets the Oxford Canal.

When I walked past last night, the boards where on yellow. Yellow is an intermediate between advised against navigation, (red), and green which is no restrictions.

There’s no restrictions anyhow, but obviously, it’s at the boaters own discretion whether they want to take their boat into an area where there may be a strong sideways flow or raised water levels.

Here’s some pictures of some views across the fields with the river in flood.

Elanor’s wedding

My step-sister, Elanor got married on Saturday 27th November.

I drove down to Kent.

It was 137 miles and took me over 3 hours on the way down. There were train strikes on.

My sister drove from the Cotswolds and it took her 6 hours. She only just got there in time, which is the way she usually does things so probably suited her just fine 😄

Wedding was good.

Everyone had a good time. Guests were invited to submit their tracklisting via a Spotify playlist, rather than have the DJ selecting them, which has always been the state of affairs in the past.

Made a difference. The music was certainly better.

Apart from that, it was free booze all night.

I knew a lot of Elie’s friends when they were at University. It was interesting to see them all now that they have grown up! Some had not changed, others I didn’t know at all.

That’s life I suppose.

An on that note, I’m going to continue with the floating serenity of boating existence.

I have a new and final solar panel I am planning to fit and I need to find out what new parts and kit I will need to fit it.

Until next time, I’ll leave you with this short video.

TTFN.