Today Francine’s itinerary called for us to stop in Windsor. We set off reasonably early again and hit the first lock before the lockkeeper had arrived and whilst it was still on self-service. Franco disembarked to operate the lock. Panic…

After yesterday’s fun and games getting moored, Juniper was now facing the wrong way, i.e. back up river towards Oxford. I say wrong way, though personally I was considering returning the way we’d come in the knowledge that we could…

Today we were heading through Oxford and into the unknown territory (for us) of the River Thames. Francine and I began again by walking ahead of Juniper, largely so we could prepare various lift bridges and locks before Juniper’s arrival.…

After our making little progress yesterday courtesy of a few necessary chores combined with deciding to have a relaxing lunch, we needed to cover a bit more ground today. At least, we thought we did. A usual rental cruise on…

Well, an early start was our plan and an early start we had. Somehow we managed to get our boatload of tourists up and ready by 7:00 AM. Wandering the short distance to our first lock of the day, Francine…

Having moored overnight in a very rural part of the Grand Union–Oxford link canal, the towpath looked favourable so Francine and I decided on another start on foot. We cast off Capt. Virginia and walked 5½ miles into the Oxford Canal…

Having pitched up – well, moored up, I suppose, since we’re on a boat – about 5 miles short of Weedon Bec yesterday evening and, there being sunshine and no locks in the offing, this morning Francine and I decided…

Our first night aboard passed very comfortably courtesy of the two fixed-bed “staterooms”. [Boating people, at least American boating people, seem to refer to bedrooms on a boat as staterooms. Who am I to argue?] Having learned our lesson that…

Provisioning Part 2 was done by yours truly and Francine in a dawn raid on our local Waitrose supermarket. Thank Darwin for civilized shopping. Realizing that our boat’s refrigerator would have a limited capacity, we bought food for two days…

Do you remember galoshes? No, neither, it seems, does anyone else – except Capt. and Mrs Virginia who were in search of a pair of waterproof overshoes for the Captain on his boating activities. We spent a good portion of Friday scouring…