Tricky cruising.

3 Locks 8½ Miles. Now moored at Abingdon.
Total of 334 locks, 460 miles, 16 Tunnels and 8 lift bridges since Nov 2006

Well the river was still at the same level when we arose this morning but perhaps not flowing quite as fast. The weather had improved so we opted to pull the pins and head for Abingdon.
The engine was only ticking over at idle rate but due to the river flow we were still making good time. We had to give the engine a burst of power on some of the bends to avoid being pushed sideways into the bank but on the whole it was a reasonably easy cruise until we got to Abingdon to moor up. We had been told to moor opposite the weir above the town but there was only 1 space available and when I tried to manouvre toward it things started going sideways so I aborted that idea and carried on.
The narrow passage through the Abingdon Bridge was flowing fairly fast but we spotted a couple of moorings past the bridge opposite Kingcraft boats. This area is very wide and I managed to spin the boat around to face upstream but when I came to moor up we only managed to get a bow rope ashore as there is an eddy on this side of the river which we had not spotted so in actual fact we were now facing into the flow the wrong way. With the help of some bystanders and getting a second rope ashore we were finally able to get the stern in and moor up.
We went for a walk into town for some provisions and decided that the town was so interesting that it needed further exploration.

For a history lesson about this town click on http://www.british-history.ac.uk/report.asp?compid=40056
At lunch time we returned to the boat to find that the boat that had been immediately behind us had gone so we moved the boat back to a better position and opted to stay overnight to give us more time to look around.
Except for one heavy down pour of rain whilst out walking the weather was good and this evening there is not a cloud in the sky so hopefully we will have another fine day tomorrow.

Old Almshouses at Abingdon