Oxford: Day 8

Adrian was exhausted after his jump seat flight yesterday, so when Macc woke up at 7 I got him his breakfast and took him for a walk, while Adrian stayed in bed a bit longer. Not long after we got back, the rain started, and it’s been on and off all day. During the morning I walked into town — the first time I’ve been there, in spite of being here for a week — and got some waterproof trousers in the Mountain Warehouse sale. Then I went on to Sainsbury’s for a restock. The route back brought back memories, because I spent many days in Oxford at the inquests of service personnel whose bodies were returned to RAF Belize Norton. They were held in the old County Hall building.

This afternoon we all went out for a walk. We went down to Osney Lock to see whether we could buy a Thames licence starting tomorrow. However the lock keeper says they can’t be post dated, so we’ll have to get one tomorrow morning. While we were there, the rain was torrential, so we sheltered under the overhang of the Osney Lock Hydro building. It has a glass front so you can see all the workings.

With the river having been so low this summer, generation is well down this year — although the solar on the roof has done quite well.

The building has an attractive garden, and a human sun dial — although there wasn’t much chance of that working today.

From there, I brought Macc back to the boat while Adrian headed off to Pets At Home, to get him a new mattress for his crate. During the hot weather he rejected his fluffy mattress and has been sleeping on the plastic base, but now it’s cooler we’ve got him one that’s not so fluffy so hopefully he won’t get too hot but also won’t pull it apart. Back at the boat I had to change clothes because they were so wet, and then it rained even harder.

So far today we’ve had over 20mm of rain just in the past six hours. All of this is of gret interest because of our need to get back north again. We’ve decided that we won’t wait to see whether the South Oxford opens at some point, either briefly or more permanently; we’ll go back down the Thames and up the GU. What’s influence the choice is that we’d feared there might be closures on the GU by now (such as Stoke Bruerne, Buckby, and Braunston). But they are still only on restricted hours (and not even on restricted days) so we’re hoping things won’t be any worse by the time we get there. After that it would help if Atherstone was re-opened, but we’ll deal with that if and when we get closer.