Well, I'm sorry for such a long wait, my readers will be deserting me in droves! It's turning into a rather boring summer at the moment. We haven't get very far, just three miles and two locks since the last posting. We're moored up near a friend who is going to do a job on the boat. We'd reckoned without the usual "boatfitters' time estimates"! We need work doing on the electric cabling on the boat, and so we moored up ready for the job, thinking it would be all over and done within a couple of days. But we're still here, and still waiting for the job to be finished. Hopefully it will be done this week and then we can really get on. I seem to have spent most of the time recently just waiting, waiting for Trev to come back for Australia so that we could get on, now waiting for the work to be finished. And there's a whole world out there for me to explore!

This is not the best of moorings, it's a rather narrow stretch of the canal, near a boatyard and therefore quite busy at the weekends. There's a hire boats base here and so each weekend the boats are changed over, and each weekend we sit here being bumped by inexperienced crew. One person who hit us told us we shouldn't be moored up here--even though it's a proper mooring!

As we're having electrical work done, at the moment we don't have proper power on the boat and so I can't use the washing machine. Consequently the laundry is piling up. I asked the boatyard if we could use their launderette, as I've seen other people using it, but the answer was no. So I'm washing by hand as we run out of things. All in all, you can probably tell I'm getting a bit low about all of this.

However, we've tried to use the time constructively. There's a railway station here adjacent to the canal, and so we caught a train and spent a day in Oxford. We visited Christ Church College, and it was a splendid place. When we were in the dining hall, I mentioned to Trev that it was just like the one in the Harry Potter film, and a little further on, we read something which told us that it was indeed the one used in the film. We also visited the cathedral which is within the college, and is the smallest in England. We had lunch at The Turf Tavern, a really old pub, located down a series of passages and without any road access. Whilst we were having lunch there, groups of students came in in their gowns, covered with 'silly string" and sequins and holding balloons. They'd just taken their final exams and were celebrating.

One evening we caught a train and went to the next village, Tackley, a whole four minute trip! We didn't even pay, there was no one to collect the money. Friends Rachel and Neil met us at Tackley station and we walked up to the local Nature Reserve and round the village. Then we had an excellent meal with them and they drove us back to the boat, and kindly took all of our papers and glass for recycling. There's hardly anywhere on the canal to recycle, and we don't like throwing it all in the bin.

One Sunday we walked across the fields to Steeple Aston and had lunch at the Red Lion. Then we walked to Rousham, to visit Rousham Park House, a private house which is open to the public twice a week. We were taken on a guided tour and it was delightful. It's been in the ownership of the same family since it was built in 1635. The gardens are very pretty, with a dovecote dated 1685, which still has its original revolving ladder to collect the birds and the eggs.

Here are some pictures of Rousham:

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