Herbie to visit OFT via her birthplace.

Yes it’s time to start raining.  Our bags are packed and we’re off tomorrow for our Autumn cruise, and this time we’re taking the anchor.  Once again we hope to get to places we’ve never been before.  Well that’s not strictly true because we’re heading down the Oxford and onto the upper Thames, which we used to know quite well when the kids were little.  We used to go camping up at Eaton Hastings (opposite Kelmscott) quite a bit until the pub burned down with the landlord in it.  Nothing to do with me guv, honest.  We also used to camp at  Radcot, and we used often to go through Newbridge (the Rose Revived and the Maybush) when driving up to my mum’s.  And we have camped at Lechlade. So it’s not new ground but it is new water if you take my meaning.  This of course all depends on the whim of OFT.  No not the Office of Fair Trading, but Old Father Thames himself.  If it starts to rain a lot, the old red boards will go up and we’ll have to hang around in Oxford I guess.

But first, we’re taking Herbie back to where she was born. Well,  fitted out at any rate.  Calcutt.

 

Perhaps we’ll be able to go under their really cool cast iron bridge.  I wonder what that cost.

I mentioned a while back that we were going to attempt to get our excessive engine vibration cured.  Well what better place than the boatyard who installed and aligned the engine in the first place.  Yes, I’m using that well tried universal fix-it tool, the cheque book.  Having marinised and installed hundreds of BMC engines Calcutt ought to know what they’re at, so next Tuesday Herbie is booked in with them for a sort out while we hang around biting our nails.  Not an ideal place to hang around as it is in the middle of nowhere. Hopefully they can do it in one day.  Fingers crossed it’s nothing too expensive.  Although a new engine would be nice.

Oi, I hear you cry.  Calcutt isn’t on the Oxford.  I know, I know,  but its only half an hour off it.