In the rain to Lechlade

We woke to a grey morning with a big threat of rain today, whilst getting ready to leave we spoke to three girls who were rowing from Lechlade to Reading in a Thames Skiff a rowing boat with a tent on it in which you can sleep http://www.skiffhire.com/index.html They were following in the footsteps of Author Jerome K Jerome " Three men in a Boat" characters, they were doing this for charity and had a few tasks which they had to complete on the way, one of these a photo of a cat so they took one of our cat " Firkin".  http://groupspaces.com/DebenRowingClub/pages/3womeninaboat

So we said goodbye to these girls and the friendly lock keeper and up the canal we set again, the canal is straight some of the time and then it's twisting and turning again, we pass caravan parks but unfortunately the rain has come as promised so most of the caravaners are confounded to their caravans looking out on to,the wet Thames.

Faringdon House is close to Radcottt where the surrounding parkland is reputedly haunted by the headless Hampden Pye a earlier owner of this house who was decapitated at sea.We then pass the village of Radcott where the 13th C triple arched bridge which is the oldest surviving bridge on the Thames. We then pass the village of Kelmcott and its 1570 built manor house .http://www.kelmscottmanor.co.uk/home

We then pass Buscot and the estate of Buscot Park http://www.buscot-park.com/ and Buscot Wharf where little remains of Brandy distillery that barrels of brandy that use to be shipped to France. And all of this in the rain, a couple of the locks were manned but the deepest where unmanned so we had to do these ourselves which because of the sheer size where quite hard to operate.

And then we reach Lechlade which is our end of this part of the journey because as we cannot navigate any further up the Thames so we must turn around and retrace our water footsteps back to Oxford over the next few days. http://www.lechladeonthames.co.uk/

We moor adjacent to a field and soon we have some nosey neighbours,a herd of cows who try to eat our ropes and manage to eat the plastic bags that we use to mark our mooring pins.

Anyway we get our wet weather clothes off and have a nice hot shower before having dinner and settling down for the night .

 

 

 

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