Thames verdict

Cor, the current was strong under Osney bridge this morning.  I'm glad we didn't get more of that on the way up the Thames or we'd still be down at Abingdon thrashing along at one mile an hour.  As it is, we came up Sheepwash channel where the water stands still and here we are back on the canal at Jericho.  I'm glad they've finished the new development with the houses and boatyard at last.

Only joking folks.  Nothing at all has happened of course.  After years of nothing happening, we still await the delivery of the promised land.  Dream on.

After tying up, opposite this hoarding  we strolled into the mighty metrollops of Oxenford. . .

Neil wafts off into a dream.  Do you remember Daphne Oxenford?  When I was a tiny tot, she was the lady on the radio who read the stories on Listen with Mother on the BBC Home Service.  Are you sitting comfortably ?  Then I'll continue. .

 to purchase victuals for our journey back up the canal and staggered back with bags full of healthy sustenance to keep us going where there are no shops.  On the way back though, we diverted through the market and visited our favourite street food stall selling hot Goan food where we bought tonight's dinner which had names I can't recall but were generous and delicious.  Sitting here an hour after dinner I can barely move.

Thinking back over our Thames experience, I can report a number of observations.

1. Birds observed in order of frequency:

• Red kites - hardly ever out of sight!
• Mallards - of course
• Herons - about one per mile
• Cormorants - several each day
• Kingfishers - a few each day
• Buzzards - here an there.
• Geese - surprisingly few, but always in gangs
• Egyptian geese - an odd pair here or their

I imagine that ten years ago the list would have been hugely different. Astonishing how many red kites.  I like to see them and I think they like to see us, often flying low over the boat.   Top birds.  Of course there were also probably lots of small brown thingies, but with my eyesight and the distance to the bankside vegetation, they were invisible to me.

2. Conspicuous wealth is impossible to ignore with all the grand houses, stripey lawns and gothic boathouses.  A measure of our unequal society.

3. Boats on the move were conspicuously rare.  It seems that the tupperware cruisers in particular don't venture out in October.  Narrowboats , although few, outnumbered them easily.  We're a hardy lot.

4. Lock gates hardly leak!! The gates work!  These Thames folk don't know they're born.

All in all, we do like the Thames.  Now we're back to canal reality where the locks have broken paddles and leaky gates and the lift bridges are a bugger to unlock.  Deep joy.