Don't try this at home

Thrupp to Oxford, 6 miles, 4 locks

Didn't wake until 10:30, I'm guessing it's due of the lack of sleep yesterday. It was grey and miserable outside, but dry, however that wasn't to last and by 12:45 when I set off, the drizzle had already started. I didn't mind, though, because I had only a short way to go before I was in Oxford and it was all going to be plain sailing. I'd removed my chimneys to make sure of that.

The first lock was Roundham Bridge, which is 7'5 (2.3m). It all went without incident, however I didn't fancy climbing down the lock ladder or walking on Oothoon's wet slippery roof, so I bow hauled her out. Then I went under Yarnton Bridge, or at least I would have had the gangplank not caught on the protruding brickwork of the arch. Funnily enough this looks like a huge bridge when you're approaching and the span of the arch looks like you could get a barge under it, however it wasn't to be. Even though my chimney wasn't in an upright position, it still got squashed as the gangplank moved and looks as though it should be crooked.

Next up was Kidlington Green Lock. This looked to be Roundham Bridge all over again, especially as it isn't very deep, but it was made less pleasant by the drizzle having got much heavier. After bow-hauling the boat into the narrows and closing the bottom gate, the wind had caught the prow and it had drifted across the canal. Normally this wouldn't be a problem because you'd just go forward with a bit of turn on the tiller and soon be off, however right in front of the prow was a little rowing boat called The Oak, which was at the end of someone's garden. (Someone's quite large garden, I should point out. Why they didn't lift the boat out of the water and store it upright, where it wouldn't have been in the way of the navigation or full of water, I don't know). With that in the way, I couldn't go forward, so all I could do was try to bring the stern in and turn the prow out. Except that the off-side part of the canal is very shallow and I got grounded front and back. I could move backwards, however that just took me back into the lock's narrows, from where I couldn't manoeuvre, and I still couldn't go forward because of The Oak. It was a completely vexing experience, trying to get Oothoon off the side of the canal while not hitting the little rowing boat and I was really cursing her owner. In the end I reversed into the narrows, jumped ashore with the centre rope and managed to pull the front out enough so that I could attempt to set off, then had a hairy time trying to get back aboard as the stern came out of the narrows and headed away from the bank. Eventually I did it and managed to get away, and without hitting The Oak.

Only a minute or two later, when I had barely got back into the centre of the channel, propulsive power suddenly disappeared. Putting the throttle into reverse didn't make any difference and neither did putting it into full forward. I clearly had something around the propeller, which at least answered yesterday's question about whether the canal is shallow or is it due to stuff round the prop: by now I knew that the answer was 'both'. Fortunately in my fiddling with the throttle I'd somehow pointed the boat towards the bank and was able to jump off and bring Oothoon to a stop. The bank at this point had lovely new piling and judging by the mud had been filled with dredgings from the canal. Nice. After tying up I went below to get changed into something more appropriate for going down a weed hatch and re-emerged to find that the drizzle had become proper rain and heavy too. My last experience down the weed hatch hadn't been a happy one, with me being too large to fit into the hole in the back deck to gain access to it, so there was only one course of action left, which was to lie on my belly out of the engine room and basically dive into the hatch. It's difficult to do because there's no-where to put your head and getting back up is tricky because there's nothing really to push up against. However I'd had a brilliant idea: I figured that I had an underwater camera, so why didn't I take pictures of what was round the prop and then I'd know what I was dealing with. Well the theory was certainly fine and the camera worked perfectly, however I think that the people who designed it assumed you'd be snorkelling off the coast of Cyprus or perhaps in the Bahamas, not in a canal in England in the rain. The pictures were useless, with abstract splodges of colour against murk. One had a shadow which could have been a propeller if you were desperate to believe that, but basically it was hopeless.

A grope around the propeller revealed two things: firstly that the bit of rope that I hadn't managed to get off the last time was still there, but much much larger; and secondly, that there was some wire wrapped around the shaft, which is what I assume was stopping it from turning. As I was dangling down into the hatch, I used my cheapo Wilkinson's one-handed saw thing to good effect and managed to get the rope off after several minutes of struggling. I was dreading having to cut through the wire, but to my delight pulling on one end of it rotated the propeller and it came away easily. A quick check confirmed that there were no further obstructions on the prop shaft, so I put everything back together and went below to get changed again. In an attempt to avoid the mud, I tried walking along the gunwale, but it was much too wet and I slipped off into the mud. My map book, which I had intended to take indoors to turn the page, fell out of my hand and down the gap between the boat and the bank, and I just managed to reach down and grab it in its waterproof house, before it would have disappeared. Once inside I considered putting my waterproofs on, but I realised that the clothes I had been originally wearing were so wet that I might as well continue to wear them.

The trip down the weed hatch had cost me 35 minutes, but at least now I knew that if there was no power, it was due to the canal and I could hear it scraping along the bottom from time to time. Eventually I came across the first of the day's lift bridges—the Drinkwater lift bridge—and was just angling to come in for a landing to tackle it when a cyclist appeared around the disused railway bridge just after it and offered to do it for me. I couldn't believe my luck.

Duke's lock went straightforwardly and as I was leaving I saw the only other boat I'd seen move all day—a hire boat with an American family on it, who were asking how long to get to Thrupp. It was a little after 4pm by this time, so I said that it was an hour or two and that they might make it before sundown. 

There's major construction work taking place by the A34 bridge, with the navigation controlled by Stop/Go boards as there's a hydraulic lifting platform straddling the canal. Just before it is another lift bridge, however as I approached, one of the workmen from the construction site was walking past the end and lifted it for me. Again I'd been lucky, but surely this couldn't last.

In fact it didn't, with me having to do the next lift bridge—Perry's lift bridge—myself. Except that I failed. I could lift it up a little bit and could get it to, say, knee height, but I couldn't get a pole underneath it and I couldn't raise it higher without being right next to the edge. I tried leveraging it open by putting my pole on a nearby bollard, but all my attempts failed. It looked like this was the end of the line. I was going to be stuck here until another boat came along with more crew. Just then, I noticed a man walking towards me under an umbrella. He was smiling and asked me if I needed a hand with the bridge. He then explained that this was a tricky bridge to do and that I stood no chance because my pole was too long. He also explained that I was lucky in that you could lift this bridge single-handed and that some of the others definitely needed two. We chatted for a bit and then I noticed Oothoon drifting away from the shore, so I ran back to catch her and the man with the brolly opened the bridge. After I went through and he'd lowered the bridge, I saw him walking back from where he'd come. I asked if he was on one of the boats moored there and he said that he was, and that he'd watched my antics through the window before deciding to come and help. He also said that there were no more lift bridges to do before I got to Oxford, which was a huge relief.

Wolvercote lock was easy enough except that there wasn't all that much daylight left and I had a couple of miles to go before I reached the end of the canal. I put a bit of a spurt on, but still slowed down for moored boats, although clearly not enough for one grumpy woman who was just returning to her boat and who complained that I hadn't slowed down at all. By the time I reached the Electric Lift Bridge, which seems to have been replaced by a proper road bridge as part of a modern housing scheme, it was really starting to get dark and by the time I got to the site of the former boatyard at Jericho and the end of the canal, it was properly dark. Nicholson's says that there are visitor moorings at the end of the 1/4 mile part of the canal that extends by Isis lock; what it doesn't tell you is that if you go down there you can't wind if you're over 30ft and that the winding hole above Isis lock only accepts 50ft boats. Not wishing to go down there to find it was full and then having to reverse out in the dark, I moored by a kind of weir just before the winding hole. There were a couple of other boats there, so I assumed it was okay, but although the front of the boat was on decent bank, the back was rather dangling out in the canal due to the bank having subsided.

Once I was tied up, that was it. There was no way I was mucking about on the canal-side gunwale to reattach chimneys so I went Inside and into warm clothing, with tacos for dinner because I wanted comfort food. It had been a hard day, even though it had only been short, with the rain and wind really making the going rough. I was so exhausted that I couldn't even face writing up my blog.

Gibraltar and the Shipton Missile Crisis

Lower Heyford to Thrupp, 8 miles, 5 locks

Woke up at 4am with the most incredible heartburn. It really was as though I was a vampire and a wooden stake had been plunged through my heart. After pacing about a lot and not knowing how to shift it, I consulted the Internet for cures, which suggested that a tablespoon of Mustard would sort it out. Desperate to try anything, I dug out my trusty pot of Coleman's and managed to swallow down three teaspoonsful. To my surprise, this actually eased the pain and while it didn't go away completely, it was sufficiently better that I was able to go back to bed. The Internet also suggested lying so that your body is on a slope, with your legs lower (given that heartburn is apparently caused by stomach juices flowing backward up the oesophagus and this will make it flow back towards the stomach), so I propped myself up on pillows and slept fitfully.

A little after 8am it was back, only not quite so bad. I couldn't face more mustard, so looked on the Wikipedia page about heartburn, hoping that it might have some different remedies. It voted wholeheartedly for Bicarbonate of Soda (which it describes as "baking soda") which rang a bell. Fortunately I've got bicarb in the larder for making bread with, so I had a spoonful in a glass of water. Or rather, I thought I did. In my not-quite-with-it state, I'd actually used baking powder. Realising my mistake, I tried again using proper bicarb and it started to work almost immediately. Feeling better, I went back to bed to let the magic happen.

About 10:30 I felt a weirdness inside, then suddenly much much better. After another 10 minutes of dozing and feeling not too bad, I decided to get up, to find that the pain was gone and I had an appetite. I thought I'd take it in easy stages and have some cereal, so I started with dry bran flakes, then added milk, then added yoghurt, then had orange juice and finally had a hankering for coffee. Figuring that I was on a roll, I decided to have a 'proper' breakfast, if only because if I was going to be sick later, it's best to have something to bring up (a trick I learned on the Isle of Man ferry, as a way of preparing for the possibility of sea-sickness). I had sauté potatoes, a fried egg and baked beans, and afterwards was feeling pretty good. I'd also put some ready-to-bake baguettes in the oven, because I was determined that I was not going to skip lunch. After all this hearty fare and a couple of trips to the loo, I felt in a boating mood, so I prepared a baguette with Serrano ham and tomato, with a tiny splash of olive oil, wrapped it in tin foil and made a flask of tea, and I was ready.

Before I set off, I checked the water levels in the engine. They seemed fine, but I thought that I would top it up anyway. It guzzled down almost exactly two litres, which didn't seem too bad. The engine started okay on the glowplugs, and I set off.

Now that I was back on deck and had time to think, I realised that one difference between today and yesterday is that I was feeling extremely stressed yesterday. There had been the business with the engine the day before and I was worried that it would overheat again, plus I was pressuring myself to get to Oxford—partially because I have friends there who I wanted to see, but also because I see the Thames and the Hanwell flight of locks as the last obstacle to me getting home. Once I'm through Hanwell, it doesn't matter if something goes wrong because there's a clear path home and I can take as long as I want. Today, on the other hand, my health was a bigger issue and if the engine overheated or anything else happened, I didn't care. Just to be sure though, I removed both chimneys and stowed them in the middle of the bits of gangplank on the roof of the boat.

The weather was grey and overcast, and quite windy, but didn't look like rain. I chugged along, slowing for the boats at Heyford Wharf and marvelling at how normal it all seemed. Even the first lock appeared dead on cue, exactly where it was supposed to be and without a strange bridge or shape. In fact it all went very well, with me bow hauling Oothoon out because it just worked better that way. 

The next lock was easy, being only 5ft (1.5m) and there was a boat waiting to come up so they handled the bottom gate for me (I should point out that, since I left Banbury, instead of having a single top gate and two half-width bottom gates, the locks have all had a single gate top and bottom). I celebrated by having half of my baguette and a cuppa.

Something I'd started to notice is how the canal often feels like it's shallow, yet at other times I'm convinced that I've got something round the propeller instead. I would occasionally do what I've started calling a 'Crazy Ivan' (after the manoeuvre in The Hunt For Red October) where I'll go into neutral for a moment, then into full reverse until either the boat has started to turn or the engine pitch changes, then back into neutral for a moment, then into forward. I'll often do this when the exhaust note is laboured, as though the engine is working really hard. A lot of the time things run a lot better after a Crazy Ivan, although that's probably psychological rather than physical. What really confuses me is that I'll leave a lock going like the clappers but gradually everything slows down. If it were prop-scum, you wouldn't think it would be better immediately after a lock.

I passed under the "Brighton" bridges and a pipe bridge—don't see many of those on the Oxford—and it was time for Pigeon Bridge lock. As Oothoon was descending, a boat based at Thrupp arrived behind and her crew handled the bottom gate for me. Next was a slow glide past all the moored boats around Enslow Wharf and Gibraltar—an unexpectedly named part of the canal, complete with it's own "rock" (it's a pub).

The Thrupp boat caught up with me again at the next lock—Baker's lock—which was very nice. After Baker's lock you're no longer on the Oxford canal; instead you're on a 'borrowed' piece of the River Cherwell, which joins from underneath the spectacular bridge 217. The bit after this is particularly wiggly, reminding me of the River Stort and with the banks looking a lot more like river banks than canal banks. The going is great, though, since the channel is quite wide and there's obviously quite a bit of depth.

After whizzing along—at one point Oothoon was going over 4mph (6.4kph)—you reach Shipton Weir lock, which is another octagonal lock like the Aynho weir lock from yesterday (my thanks to Adam on nb Debdale, who wrote to explain that the shape is there to make the lock use more water than it needs to for the drop. If it didn't do this, then the subsequent locks, which are normal-sized, would draw more water than the lock provides to the intervening pound, draining the pound dry. Given that the lock can't be deeper due to the relative water levels, the canal designer's only choice is to make it wider). At Aynho, crew from the boat that had gone through before me operated the gates and paddles and I just stood on the back deck, looking pretty and taking photographs, so I hadn't considered how I'd do it by myself. In the end I decided to push Oothoon over to one side, so I'd be able to get aboard again from the bank. In the distance I could also see that lift bridge #219 was in the 'down' position, so I'd have to figure out how to do that too. Just at that moment, like the Cavalry bearing down on a sticky situation, came the boat from the earlier locks. It was a tiddler in comparison to Oothoon and we'd easily fit into the lock together, so I waited for her. Once we were both in, they closed the back gates and I did the front, and we changed level gracefully. It also gave me an opportunity to ask whether they might be kind enough to operate the lift bridge. Scheming or what? As it happened they were quite happy to do the bridge and given that Oothoon was blocking the exit, I went first and they followed behind, with one of their crew running ahead to lift the bridge. As we approached, another boat came through and for a moment I was convinced that they were going to hold the bridge open for all of us, but they didn't, and the crews passed each other on the bridge, in what seemed like a highly symbolic way.

Just after the lift bridge there's a railway bridge and just after that there's a disused railway bridge that has had the span over the canal removed. As I approached, I noticed a hooded child's head popping into view. This really could only mean one thing and going to full throttle, I looked up at the bridge as more heads bobbed up. Then the missiles came. Fortunately they were only throwing sods of earth rather than rocks, but a couple hit the side of the boat and two nearly hit me—one landing directly between my feet and exploding like a muddy nail bomb. The boat behind had seen all of this and had whipped out a camera and were photographing the assailants and calling out "Smile for the camera!", but it didn't stop at least one round of sods raining down on them. I then thought they had stopped to get off and give chase, but actually they'd become grounded. That really was not a good place to get stuck, however the kids seem to have gone.

Next was Thrupp proper—a very pretty collection of boats but quite a narrow stretch of canal. A boat decided to pull out right in front of me, so it was fortunate that I was going along on tickover. I followed them to the right-angle bend next to Thrupp Yard, where it looked like they were turning, but they were actually mooring to use a water point. While I drifted, waiting to find out what they were doing, a woman on a nearby boat said hello and that there was a queue for the water point. I explained that I didn't want water, but I did want to go past the lift-bridge, so she kindly volunteered to open it for me. By this time the other boat had finally moored and I needed to do something or I'd start drifting into nearby boats, so I took a deep breath, opened the throttle and tried to pick my best line to curve round and go through the bridge. This kind of thing is always difficult when your peers are watching, especially when they're hanging out of side hatches like linesmen at a football game, but I somehow got it right and swished round gracefully and lined up with the lift-bridge perfectly. "Bravo!" said the woman who was holding the front rope of the boat that I had waited for and I was convinced that this would make me hit something, but I got through without touching the sides and thanked the woman who was sat on the bridge's balance beam watching the performance.

There's a nice looking pub at Thrupp called the Boat Inn and it looked very welcoming, but I wasn't sure of the mooring situation so I pressed on. A bit later there's another pub called The Jolly Boatman and the sign clearly said 48 hours, so I tied up alongside. I didn't really want to go much further, as it was 5pm and next stop would have been Kidlington, which looked a bit built-up. Besides, I'm now only 6 miles and 5 locks from Oxford, although that leaves plenty of opportunity for disaster to strike.

In the morning I'd had a txt from my friend Chris in Oxford, asking whether I had arrived yet. I txt'd him back this evening to say where I was and got one by return to say that he and his partner would join me in the pub at 8pm. I intended to get to the pub for 7pm so I could have some dinner, but got delayed by phone calls and got there at 7:45, but they were still serving food. I plumped for the fishcakes—I didn't want anything fancy after yesterday—and to drink went for rum and coke, since I'm sure my mother once told me that rum is good for calming your stomach. At 7:55 I got a call to say that my friends had arrived, then we got together around the table for a good old natter. We stayed there until chucking out time, then came back to the boat for a cuppa before they headed off.

My ambition for tomorrow is to finally reach Oxford; I guess the question is by which route? If I do it via Duke's Cut, I can avoid all bar the Drinkwater lift bridge; however the route to the Oxford visitor moorings would then be via the Thames for which I don't have a licence yet and involves a lock. On the other hand, if I stay on the Oxford, I might have another two lift bridges to contend with and there'll be a bit of the Oxford Canal that I've missed. Tricky.

Stress! Stress! Stress!

Twyford Wharf to Lower Heyford, 9.25 miles, 6 locks

Nice weather again today so I was looking forward to making lots of progress, if the engine would let me. I had breakfast then set off at about 9:45. The engine temperature was hovering around the 60° mark by the time I reached King's Sutton lock. This is quite deep at 10'8 (3.25m) so once Oothoon had descended into the depths, I decided to bow haul her out, which worked pretty well. As I was doing this another boat arrived and they kindly closed the bottom gate for me.

Almost immediately after the lock was the first of the day's lift bridges. I'd been dreading these because I think they're probably very difficult to do by yourself, especially when it was pointed out to me that you need to keep a weight on the end of the balance beam or they close. Fortunately it was open, as were almost all of today's bridges. Speaking of bridges, I'd noticed that a lot of them are on the tight side and at Nell Bridge lock—noted for its narrowness—there's even a board to tell you how much headroom there is under the bridge. That was fine, but it doesn't take into account the curvature of the arch. As it happened there was 2.25m of clearance (7.3ft) but I took the chimney off just in case.

Aynho Weir lock is a bit of an odd one. It's only got a drop of 12" (30cm) and is octagonal! The gates are two faces of the octagon, with huge gaps on either side of the boat. I'm sure it's really there to separate the canal from the River Cherwell, which crosses the canal immediately prior to the lock, but I don't know why it has the funny shape or tiny drop.

Next was Aynho Wharf, which has a boatyard. I'd been fretting over the engine temperature like a broody mother hen all day and I was hoping that I might be able to get a new impeller if the boatyard had a chandlery. Well it does—kind of—but they mainly sell 'ordinary' stuff like ShurFlo water pumps and chimneys and fuses; not exotica like impellers.

Leaving Aynho Wharf, you go under the extremely tight Aynho Bridge 190. This might have been okay, except that Aynho is pretty exposed and the wind caught me as I passed under the bridge, driving the front of the boat straight into the bridge wall and scraping the gangway—that I've been carrying on the roof since I left Battlebridge—across the roof and leaving deep gouges in the paint work. After moving the gangway over to the other side of the roof, I tried bow hauling the boat through the bridge but the wind was too strong and she kept getting stuck on the bridge wall. There was nothing for it but to go under under power. I went slowly and cautiously, which was probably the wrong thing to do because again the wind caught me and the chimney of the water heater went straight into the arch and moved a couple of inches. I've been unhappy with this chimney since it was fitted when I had the water heater replaced back in January, maintaining that it's far too tall and unwieldy to be on a narrowboat. Worse, it's of a tube-within-a-tube construction, where one tube carries clean air into the (room sealed) heater and the other takes away burnt gasses. If the heater isn't happy with the installation (using some kind of gas sensor thingamajig) then it won't run and since the chimney probably wasn't designed for use on boats, it's hard to get off and fiendishly difficult to refit, which is why I tend to leave it alone if I possibly can. The wind relented and I got the rest of the boat through the bridge intact, although I was badly shaken by the experience. I'd been fretting all day about the engine and my next biggest worry was the lift bridges, so I really wasn't ready when I was caught out by low bridges and the wind. Even the Ashby canal didn't do that to me.

After tying up—again an exhausting and frustrating experience with the boat wanting to waft across the canal on the merest breath of wind—I looked at the water heater chimney. It was still intact and attached, but a bit movable, which it hadn't been previously. I went below to see what state everything was in and the heater was still there on the wall, except that the collar to connect the chimneys at the top was at an interesting angle. I also found that the heater moved and by looking round the side I could see that the collision has pulled the heater's mounting bracket off the wall and left the heater sitting on two screws. I loosened the collar and climbed up onto the roof to remove the chimney. I'd have to look it it properly later.

I wasn't feeling much up to it when I got to Somerton Deep lock and thought about stopping for lunch, but I really couldn't face food and taking a break wasn't going to get the boat through the lock. I took my time and just as I was about to set Oothoon lowering gently into the lock, the boat from earlier arrived. Her skipper told me to get aboard and he'd do the lock for me, for which I was extremely grateful. It's 12ft (3.7m) and there was no-way I was going to climb down the ladder into it.

More hilarity at bridge 198 or "Deep Cutting Bridge" as Nicholson's has it, which I barely got under even when crouching. Traditionally pulled working boats would have needed a very short horse to get under here I think. Who names these bridges anyway?

All this business with bridges had distracted me from the engine temperature, which I'm pleased to say had peaked at a little over 80° on the gauge. Any higher and I'm guessing there will be trouble, but so long as it doesn't happen I can live with it. Reassuringly, when I stop to go through locks, the temperature drops back to 60°, making me think that the impeller must be intact and doing something. Interestingly, in the shop at Aynho Wharf there was a chap who had recently had to replace the impeller on his water pump. He said his was down to one 'vane' and that he knew it was deteriorating because the running temperature had been gradually rising. After having one fitted at Welford the engine ran at 50°, so I'm wondering whether 80° indicates that there's already some damage but not so much that it's stopping water from being pumped. I can really see why people say that ignorance is bliss, sometimes.

Allen's lock at Upper Heyford was straightforward in that I moored and set the lock filling, but when I looked back to check that Oothoon was tied securely, I realised that a BW work boat behind was completely straddling the canal and blocking it. I wandered over to have a look and found that it was tied directly onto piling with black nylon rope at the front, but that the blue nylon rope that had tied the rear directly to the piling had been cut through by the movement of the boat. These boats must be hydraulic, judging by the control gear on the front, but I was able to use this to twist the boat around to bring the back across to the bank. I jumped on the back and found several bits of blue rope, none of which were particularly useful. There was even a large looped bit underwater, but the loop was too short to go round the piling and I couldn't get the knot through. In the end, all I could do was tie the severed rope back together and hope that it held. I wonder if this is the source of all the blue nylon rope that has found its way around Oothoon's propeller over the years?

After Upper Heyford, a quick look at the map and my watch made me decide that I'd stop at Lower Heyford. Upper sounds nice as does the pub, but the one at Lower Heyford is supposed to be just off the towpath and that sounded better to me. The journey between the two Heyford's is quite short and there must be an Anglo-Welsh hire place somewhere nearby judging by the number of hire boats coming the other way. Which was good, because just before Lower Heyford was the first lowered lift-bridge that I'd encountered all day. I had stopped to try and figure out what was the best way to tackle it, when an Anglo-Welsh laden with kids wearing life jackets came the other way. They were all eager as anything to do the bridge, pounding across and having it aloft in no time. The other captain graciously waved me through and as I went past and thanked him, the Anglo-Welsh training chap who was on the back deck with him said that what he does when he's by himself is to take his boat pole and prop the bridge open with that while he goes under. That sounds like an excellent idea and I'll try it next time I meet a lowered lift bridge, although to be honest I'm hoping that that's never.

Nicholson's says that there are good moorings around the lift bridge and there are—sort of. They're round the corner actually, but not too far. Once I was moored, I took another look at the water heater. I tried refitting the chimney but couldn't get the alignment right and going below I could see that the problem was now the angle of the heater, which wasn't flush against the wall any more. Not having a better idea, I took the front cover off to see whether it was possible to screw the heater to the wall without using the bracket, since that screwed to the wall and would have required the complete removal of the heater in order to refit. There wasn't, but I was able to sort out the collar at the top. Refitting the cover, I decided that the only solution was to pin the heater back against the wall with a bungee cord connected between one of the wall hooks that I hang pans on and another hook that I'd need to put on the other side. I tried this and it worked a treat, with the heater pressed nicely against the wall and the collar now in passable alignment with the gaping hole in the roof where the chimney needed to go. Back on the roof again and a bit of jiggling and cursing, and the chimney reconnected and I could feel it sit down back onto the 'inner' tube and make a seal. I pulled the watertight rubber collar that is silicone'd to the roof over the outer tube to make good, then went back indoors. Frankly I was a bit concerned because I'm very nervous of gas, but there was no smell of gas around any of the pipework and the heater was nicely pressed against the wall and the chimney looked perfect. With a deep breath I switched the heater on and turned on the hot tap. There was the clicking of the igniter and then the red 'fault' light came on. Thinking that this wasn't so surprising after what it had been through, I tried again. This time the heater ignited and the internal fan came on to waft the burnt gasses away. It didn't sound exactly like it used to, but that wasn't surprising either. It'll do, but really needs to be looked at properly. Given that most of the cost of installation was to have it mounted and the pipework arranged, I'm guessing that having it looked at won't be cheap either. I might be better off spending less money having the optional back boiler fitted to the gas central heating, although there's then the cost of having a plate welded over the hole in the roof. Oh why couldn't I just have had my Paloma fixed back in January? Damn boat regs!

After all this malarky with chimneys, I was in no mood to cook, so I went to the pub. It is Saturday night after all; and all I'd eaten today is my F2 breakfast of bran flakes with a banana and a probiotic yoghurt. I ordered Duck Paté and the Irish Stew. The Paté was okay but nothing special and the hot baguette it came with was a disaster. I'd have been much happier with plain ordinary toasted white bread. The Irish Stew with dumplings was a much better effort, especially as I asked for mash rather than new potatoes (more comforty, innit?) but the dumplings were crusty on the bottom. When my mam used to make them, they were like little fluffy clouds that floated in the stew. With all this I was drinking a pint of Arundel bitter, which seemed to be on the strong side. It was all going well until I ordered coffee afterwards and—stupidly—put sugar in it. That's a bad habit I have when I'm not sure whether the coffee will be drinkable or not. As it happened, the combination of slightly too much food combined with strong bitter and sweet coffee on an empty stomach was not a happy one, and on the way back to Oothoon I was feeling distinctly queasy. By the time I reached the canal I knew that the only solution was to be sick, so I found a quiet wier along the canal bank and effortlessly brought the whole lot up. Feeling better, although with that strange 'having been sick' feeling, I walked slowly back to the boat, cheered by the thought of what a rather tactless friend of mine in Manchester would have said: it's what kept Princess Diana thin!

Back home and being a Saturday night, it was off to Brewster's in Animal Crossing to see K.K. Slider perform. A couple of weeks ago he'd given me a bootleg of his song "K.K. Faire" but I couldn't remember how the original went, so I requested it and recorded it on the computer. I have to say that I prefer the bootleg, but there you go.

Impellered

Banbury to Twyford Wharf, 2.75 miles, 1 lock

Wonderful weather this morning and I was up and ready to go by 10. It was a bit strange leaving Banbury and I've noticed that I get this feeling whenever I leave somewhere I've been a few days. The other feeling I get is one of panic and that was definitely present this morning. Thinking about it, I can only assume that it is once again due to me setting targets for myself, in this case to get to Oxford by the end of Saturday. That was the plan yesterday, except that I lost the day to boat problems, shopping, chores and stabbing myself (looking much better today, thank you). Today was going to be different.

My biggest worry was the large number of lift bridges on this stretch of canal. A couple of people have told me that they're usually 'up' and I have nothing to worry about, however my experiences with movable bridges so far haven't been great and I'm still a bit unnerved by yesterday's. As it happens, they were all raised and I whizzed through. In fact my biggest problem of the morning was the brightness of the sun, which was shining directly in my eyes most of the time.

Eventually I got to a lift-bridge that appeared to be down, except that something was wrong with the picture. It turned out that this was the first lock and the 'something wrong' were people with windlasses. There was a boat coming up and another behind it, so both crews took complete control of the lock and all I had to do was look after Oothoon. It all went well, which is good because it looked like quite a deep lock to me, although it turns out it's a baby at 9'6 (2.9m)—the next lock is 10'8 (3.25m) and there's Somerton Deep to come, which is 12 foot! (3.7m)

After leaving the lock I noticed that the temperature gauge was registering 80° and as I watched it jumped to 90°. Not long afterwards, smoke started to emerge from the engine area and I pulled over. I experimented with leaving the engine running, which brought down the temperature a little, but not enough to stop the smoke; and stopping the engine, which made the temperature go up considerably due to the lack of cooling water. Once the temperature was at a safe level, I unscrewed the cap on the header tank and looked inside. There appeared to be water there, but I knew from my DeLorean days that this is misleading. I'd taken the trouble to two-thirds fill my 25 litre water carrier and I slowly glugged it into the top of the engine, with it overflowing just before I ran out. Having filled the tank, I cheerfully unmoored and set off down the canal again, only to watch the temperature needle rise to 60°, 70°, 80° and 90°. After the appearance of smoke I pulled over—this time a little way before bridge 177 between King's Sutton and Adderbury (Twyford Wharf).

Leaving the engine running, I took the covers off and looked for leaks. Sure enough, the two grease nipples on the auxiliary water pump, whose impeller I'd had replaced back in Welford, had water dripping from them. I stopped the engine and waited for it to cool, then removed the brass caps on the nipples and stuffed them with grease. I also topped up the water just in case and was pleased to see that it didn't need much. I started the engine and checked for leaks, and on finding none I again set off.

This time I really didn't get far—just under the bridge and round the corner in fact—before the temperature was up in the 70's. I pulled over again and stopped the engine. A quick check under the covers showed that nothing was dripping and at that point I decided I was out of my depth and called RCR. They'd called me sometime earlier in the week when I'd had no mobile reception, to check whether I was happy with the call-out I'd had on the way to Coventry when I'd run out of diesel and I'd called them back yesterday and upgraded to Gold membership, so I didn't feel anything like as nervous as I would have if this had been my second call-out of the seven allowed by Silver membership.

RCR said that someone would be with me between 4 and 4:30, so I let the engine cool a bit more, then decided I'd use the 'temperature window' to get Oothoon back to bridge 177—this being the last road bridge for several miles. With fingers crossed and not a little trepidation, I put her into reverse and pulled away from the bank. Narrowboats were never designed to go backwards and it really shows in their handling, which is almost, but not quite, non-existent. By pushing the tiller towards the left (as you look off the back of the boat) you can kind-of vaguely move to the right and vice-versa, but it isn't exactly steering and it's the front of the boat that you need to keep an eye on. I was fairly happy that nothing would be coming, since the two boats going through the lock were the only other moving boats I'd seen all day, however just as I came around the bend—tacked round the bend is probably a more appropriate description—there was another boat coming under the bridge. I was headed for the bank at that point anyway, so just kept going, doing a little puff of forward thrust before hitting it to make the front turn in. The result was a wonderfully graceful 'reverse into a parking spot' manoeuvre that left me adjacent to the bank so they could pass. Once they were gone, it was a bit more effort to get under the bridge backwards, but again my line was good and I sailed through and parked perfectly.

Jim, the RCR man, was at the boat bang on 4:30 and I explained what I'd done today and also the troubled history of the auxiliary water pump and the impeller. After running up the engine and feeling various pipes, he concluded that one side of the pump was hot and the other merely warm—just like in Welford. Fortunately I'd had the foresight to get another impeller in the chandlery at Rose Narrowboats in Brinklow last week, so if it was the impeller then I was ready. After a quick call to a 'Jabsco Expert' and a struggle, Jim got the cover off the pump and where there should have been an impeller, there was...a few bits of rubber. It had pretty much disintegrated. That would explain the lack of cooling then. Although Jabsco pumps weren't Jim's area of expertise, I'd listened carefully to what Dave had said when he'd fitted the replacement impeller in Welford, so knew the trick for getting the belt off the pulley and how you have to take the pulley off to push the shaft through to get the locking key so you can fit the new impeller. It was a bit of effort, because you need to lean over the engine to get to the pump and there's the ever present danger of the shark-infested* bilge for you to drop things in, but Jim managed it and with a few minutes to go before sunset, everything was back together and we started the engine.

After Dave replaced the impeller, the engine had a tendency to run all day at about 50°; after fitting this new one, we couldn't get a temperature to register on the gauge at all. In the end we left it a while, running at a decent amount of revs and got a small needle deflection, which told us what we needed to know. I filled in the paperwork and Jim headed off to the first of the two jobs still left for him to do today. Still unanswered is what happened to the impeller to cause it to disintegrate and whether it would affect this one too?

As the engine hadn't run much today, I left it running to charge the batteries and to see what would happen temperature-wise. I stopped it at 8pm and it was up to 60°, which I can live with. It might be less than that when the boat is moving, as there'll be a better cooling effect from the moving water outside the keel tank.

Dinner was pasta with pesto and crayfish tails. I'd bought a tub of these in the Tesco in Rugby and they looked very nice. Worst case, I figured that I could buy some rocket and make an ersatz M&S sandwich. Feeling that I really needed some comfort food, I had a tin of rice pudding afterwards. It was nice at the time, but I'm woozy now with the sugar. I'm hoping that I'll make some progress tomorrow, but really I'm worried about the water pump. As I don't know what caused its demise, I don't know that it won't happen again, except I do know that I don't have a spare impeller. I really don't want it to go wrong on the Thames, especially on the tidal bit from Teddington to Brentford. I'm beginning to think that maybe I should have gone down the Grand Union after all, even if it would mean going through Blisworth tunnel again.

* I'm joking—there aren't really sharks in my bilge.

A curate's egg

Banbury, 0.25 miles, 1 lock

The sun was shining this morning which lifted my mood after last night. I had several jobs to do today, the most important of which was to sort out the glowplug issue, so after getting dressed I went into the engine room to get some kind of feel for what the problem was. There are numerous wires coming off the starter battery but one specifically goes to a box marked "Glowplugs". I assumed that this was the fuse for the glowplugs and was probably a good place to start. Inside the box there was a strip of thin metal stretched between two terminals. It looked intact, but just to check I put a meter over it. Yes, no problem there. I figured the problem was to do with the relay that activates the glowplugs because it's that 'click' of the relay that wasn't happening. There were likely to be several wires related to the operation of the relay, for example there might be one off the keyswitch. Starting with the glowplug fuse I followed it down to a large green cylinder with wires coming off it. This was obviously some kind of power distribution thingamajig and possibly even the relay itself. Hanging off it, not connected to a spade terminal, was a black wire. Surely it couldn't be as simple as a wire come off? After pushing the wire back onto the terminal, I turned the key to halfway and...click! The glowplugs activated and after 30 seconds of giving their cheery warmth into the engine block, the engine fired up straight away. I was saved!

After this triumph, I decided to celebrate with breakfast in the BHS restaurant, which Oothoon was effectively parked next to. Not bad for the price, especially given that one of the options available was bubble'n'squeak, but the mushrooms were tinned rather than fresh and the coffee was disgusting. Still, it cheered me up even more.

Even better was that when I got back to the boat, I realised that the fire was burning. I guess my last attempt to light it last night must have worked, so I filled up the coal scuttle and put a bit more fuel on the fire to stoke it up.

Next was shopping. I unpacked the shopping trolley I bought yesterday and tried to figure out how to put it together. Putting the wheels on was easy enough, but there's a brace thing that goes inside the bag and I couldn't figure out how to fit it in and get the bag into the frame of the trolley at the same time. Then I saw the instructions on the floor. A quick read of these and it all sorted itself out and was dead easy really.

With my trolley assembled, it was off to Aldi, which looked to be a shortish walk away. It wasn't. It was a long walk away and past a huge Tesco Extra. Never mind, the walk will do me good. Aldi was its usual self, except that there was no grapefruit wheatbeer, nor generators, nor funny soups. However I did find Poppin' Chicken in the freezer compartment, which was basically the same as the stuff I'd made using the Fajita kit the other day. Aldi also sell Burrito kits, so between them I should be able to recreate the stuff Paul and I had last week.

The walk back was much easier than normal, thanks to the trolley. It isn't steerable, so going round corners requires you to tip it back slightly and swivel it, but I schlepped at least 16 litres of water, milk and orange juice back, not to mention soup, veg and sundry other things. That would have been impossible for me to do otherwise, so I'd say the trolley is a great success in that regard. Less successful, however, is getting it back on the boat. Because it's heavy and has sticky-out bits all over the place, it's tricky to get onto the boat. Also once it is indoors, there's no easy way to collapse it, so it sits there fully assembled, taking up a lot of space. Not so useful. Maybe it'll be less of an issue once the front cabin isn't full of junk.

Now that I was back and all the shopping was unloaded, it was time to do the next chore: filling the water tank. This required me to get Oothoon through the hydraulically operated lift bridge in the centre of Banbury, where the lift mechanism is on the non-towpath side. There's a bollard, so you can moor while you do it, but I couldn't reach the bollard because the restaurant boat Rosamund The Fair was moored outside Tooley's boatyard. I could have tied up to her, however that would only have got me access to inside the boatyard, which isn't helpful. Standing on the prow, I was just thinking that the only solution would be to go right up to the bridge and climb onto it, when fortunately a passer-by offered to lift the bridge for me. I handed him a windlass and off he went, while I scuttled along the gunwale back to the cockpit. Once through the bridge, I tied up at the water point and had my windlass returned.

Filling with water took ages, so I took the opportunity to take the (full) loo down to the Elsan point by the bus station and empty it. I then did the same with the first of the rubbish bags, closing the bottom gates of the lock and opening a top paddle to fill it. Just before I took the second lot of rubbish for dumping, I had the bright idea that I'd unwrap another set of LED lights and chuck the unwanted packaging. Picking up a conveniently placed Stanley Knife, I cut down into the plastic blister pack and straight through it into my left thumb. I was a bit shocked at this, but it was a nice clean cut and after washing it, I pressed the two halves of the cut together so they could heal. I left them like this for a while until they didn't come apart, then carried the rubbish down to the bins. I left the LED lights in their blister pack.

Once the water tank was full I disconnected the hose, unmoored and headed for the lock. A woman who had been down to empty her elsan offered to open the top gate for me, so I got in the lock, closed the top paddle and opened the bottom paddles, all using my right hand. I was waiting for Oothoon to descend into the lock when another passer by offered to open the bottom gates and close the paddles, so I got back aboard. Once through the lock I realised that my hand had started to bleed again and that I was in no condition to operate a boat. I pulled over to the visitor moorings just past the lock and tied up—not easy when you can't really use one hand properly.

After cleaning the cut again, I realised that I didn't have a suitable plaster to go on it, so I wandered back into town to get one. In Superdrug they sell umpteen types of plaster, including transparent, waterproof and 'silver' anti-bacterial. In the end I went for Spray Plaster, which is an aerosol that you spray over the wound and it forms a kind of clear protective skin that disappears after a couple of days. It has the advantage of being waterproof and flexible, and you can spray it in awkward places, which I could see might be useful. After applying it, I popped into Costa Coffee for a Gingerbread Latte to cheer me up.

Returning to Oothoon, I realised that the fire had gone out. Maybe that coal this morning was a little too much for it. I remade it and it fired up straight away, which was good. Paul called to say how exhausted he was after getting up at 5:30 this morning for work and how he was going to have dinner, a beauty bath, then bed. I pottered around for a bit then made poppin' chicken fajitas, which were almost as good as the last lot, the difference being that Herr Aldi's Fajita Kit hasn't quite the same salsa sauce as the Old El Paso one. Very nice nonetheless. Hopefully my hand will have healed a bit by tomorrow and I could try to head off again. I've now only got a few weeks left before the stoppages start in November and I really need to get a move on.

Rain, Trains and Trolleys

Banbury, 0 miles, 0 locks

Rain today, so just as well we're not moving. Paul is going back to Hull this afternoon, so we both had a lie-in. Breakfast was sausage sandwiches made with Tesco chicken sausages (due to Paul's Chicken obsession). I'd never had these before and they're not much like ordinary bangers, being very herby and having a much denser texture. They taste nice though and I certainly enjoyed them.

I got the engine going—with much reluctance on its part—then Paul and I moped around the boat all day, talking and drinking tea and generally feeling a bit flat. When the time came, we wandered off to the railway station, which really isn't far away at all (indeed, the canal runs right by the side of it and there's a handy set of stairs to get to it). Paul was getting the Edinburgh train to Doncaster, then changing onto a Hull train. It is a five or six hour journey, including a 30 minute wait at Doncaster. Still quicker than by boat though.

After he left I wandered through the funfair—now in full swing—to Argos. I'd been talking to Paul about how you can only carry a limited amount of shopping when you're on your own and how it can be tricky because it's assumed that you'll have a car. His suggestion was to get a granny-style shopping trolley and after consulting the Argos website, that's what I decided to do.I also wanted to do my laundry and it turned out that there's a launderette just along the road from Argos (Cotton Clouds—47 Broad Street, OX16 5BT), so having popped in to check when they were open and how much money I'd need, I took my trolley back to the boat (still in its box), strapped my laundry bag to my normal trolley and returned to the launderette.

Back at the boat, I had another unsuccessful go at lighting the fire, then used up the cooked sausages left over from breakfast by chopping them up into a tin of Heinz Spaghetti to make a kind of Scumbalina Spaghetti and Meatballs, then attempted to catch up with three days blogging. Bedtime soon, with the luxury of freshly laundered bedding. Bliss!

A day off

Banbury, 0.5 miles, 0 locks

Niceish weather today, but following a discussion about targets and how Paul needed to go home tomorrow, we'd decided that we'd have a day off and mooch around Banbury instead of trying to get to Oxford. It seemed like a sensible decision and also made me aware that, although Paul has enjoyed the last few days of boating and locking, really here's here to see me and we hadn't done much of that except on the back deck.

We got ready to go out and realised that all the other boats around us had left, so I suggested that we move round the corner to the posh moorings. As I tried to start the engine I realised why it has been reluctant to start of late: the glow plug relay has probably died. Normally you turn the key halfway and there's a click and the glowplugs kick in to heat the engine block so that it doesn't bring down the temperature of the diesel and prevent it from igniting, however the click wasn't happening and turning the key simply turned the engine over. After giving it several goes, the engine eventually spluttered and roared into life, but I remember that when I first got Oothoon and before I'd found the proper position for the glowplugs, it was always a hit or miss affair as to whether the engine would start, and often a miss. Now that the weather is getting colder, I'm going to have to get this looked at quickly. Fortunately, from our new location in beautiful downtown Banbury, Tooley's boatyard—yes that Tooley's out of Tom Rolt's book Narrow Boat—is about 100 yards away, so maybe they can do something.

Banbury seems to be another typical market town, with its market square and shopping mall, but unexpectedly you couldn't actually see any of it because it was all hidden behind a funfair. This is the Banbury Michaelmas Fair, which is a little confusing because my diary says that Michaelmas is in late September, but apparently it refers to Old Michaelmas, which was October 11th. I was told that you shouldn't pick blackberries after Michaelmas day, but I guess no-one told that first boat in the Fenny Compton tunnel yesterday (or maybe they did and they were naughtily harvesting the leftovers). The fair had obviously just arrived and was setting up, so it was all a hive of activity. It doesn't start until tomorrow, so we probably won't get to see it.

We wandered around and did quite a bit of shopping. Inspired by my Everlasting Torch, Paul bought two equally everlasting torches in Wilkinson's, except that these have three LED bulbs to my torch's one, they have a rubbery non-slip coating and a wrist strap, and they're powered by squeezing in a pop-out thingamajig rather than, er, waving the torch. Recommended.

We returned with the shopping and I had no problem starting the engine to charge the batteries, so Paul got on with getting the fire going. I explained the principles and went to do some fiddling in the engine room, but when I returned, although he'd created a lot of smoke, the fire hadn't taken. He tried again, but again it wouldn't take. I said I'd have a go, and it all looked very impressive, but it didn't work either. Paul wondered whether the new kindling was not really suitable and I was beginning to think he might be right. He had one more go while I got dinner ready, but fortunately with the heat from the cooker it didn't matter that the fire wasn't on.

Dinner was Scumbalina Fish Pie Royale. This takes the Fish Pie Deluxe I had a while ago and knocks it up a notch by using Salmon fish fingers and—as well as the tin of baked beans—adds in a small tin of sweetcorn and a very small tin of garden peas. The mash is upgraded to cheesy mash; and the cheese and leek topping is replaced by Tesco Ciabatta bread crumbs. Paul was astonished at how lovely it was and decided that it was far nicer than the Thai food he'd had the previous night, which I was very chuffed about.

After dinner we headed for the Old Reindeer Inn. It's a Hook Norton pub and the beer was good. Nicholson's says that it is "generally favoured by adults who enjoy a peaceful evening out, with no fruit machines", but what we found was that the place was crawling with Chess players. They were obviously meeting in a back room somewhere (perhaps the mysterious oak-panneled Globe Room) and would emerge in twos and threes to order drinks and slag off the other players. Chess bitchiness—who knew? We got another carry-out at closing time and headed back to a not-very-warm Oothoon.