Date - 2-3-07 Day - Friday Start - 1015 bottom of Claydon Flight End - Banbury town centre 1430 hrs
We thought we were well away from the railway when we moored last night, we could barely hear the trains passing, then at about 1830 all the trains hooted twice as the passed through the cutting, thank goodness this stopped about 11pm. In the early hours I was woken by what I thought was a boat coming up the cut but it was a heavy, slow moving train completely covered in lights drawing out of the cutting, I can only assume that they had been working on the line all night. I did notice a few days ago that there are a lot of new sleepers laying beside the track, so maybe they are changing them out. It was a crystal clear moon lite night with bright stars and no wind and today followed with bright sunshine with just a bit of a nip in the air. While we were taking the dog for a walk a boat came passed, they had been moored about a quarter of a mile further up and would be setting all the locks against us so we were in no hurry to follow them. We set of at 1015 and as we dropped through Elkington Lock I noticed that the next pound was down a bit, somewhere between 18 inches and 2 foot. We crept down the centre of the cut scraping the bottom, as we approached VarnesLock I could see a BW workboat in the mouth of the lock, I managed to get the bows in and we wandered down to see what was happening, it appeared that they were changing the walkway on the top gate and had to drop the pound to burn the bolts out. They said they would only hold s up about 20 minuets and that as soon as the old walkway was off they would pull back and work us through. By now Harnser was in the mud at both ends and I could hardly push the bows out at all, however with lots of revs to was the mud away from the stern and several minuets use of he bowthruster we started to get to the centre of the channel, as we did we pushed a bicycle up about half way along the boat which must have fallen in sometime earlier. BW helped us through the lock and I gave them the bike to dispose of, it didn't look in to bad a condition. We continued on to Cropredy where the boat that had left before us had turned and was about to head back North. The owners were on the bank drying their dog. When they moored up he shot out of the boat and jumped off, he had not realised they had turned round and the towpath was now on the other side and not the way he had jumped. After filling with water in Cropredy where I spotted another coal sack floating just below the surface but out of reach of the boat hook we headed on to Banbury. As we went through the lift bridge in the centre of town the young lady told us that the canal was swarming with police below the next lock which was very true and they had the whole area cordoned off, including the canal as a crime seen and we were unable to pass down through the lock, so it was a case of reversing back across the basin and through the lift bridge to moor opposite the shopping centre. We later found out that the police were recovering a body from the canal. -- Brian <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Visit this site and help save our waterways http://www.savethewaterways.org.uk/
