Blackberries, oaks, and Einstein - just another day

Someone told me that summer marches north at the pace of a walking man.  Hmm, well I'm not sure how long it would take me to walk from  home in the, ahem, Royal County (Berkshire) to Rugby, but the blackberries up here are well behind. Down home I've gathered a couple of pounds of juicy ones from hedgerows near our house, but up here this is what we see.  

Nevertheless, the canal sides are very lush right now like this stretch at the seemingly inappropriately named All Oaks Wood (I went for a walk and only saw other species).

When I was walking back along looking for oaks there I took the picture below.  If that doesn't look like something from a hire boat brochure or a calendar I don't know what does.

I'm still pondering the remarkable difference between the North and South Oxford canals.

Compared to the rustic wandering South with its often delapidated locks and sometimes jungly towpath, the North end seems a good bit tidier.  It could be described as a series of tree lined avenues linked by short wiggly bits.

We didn't move much today, just up to Stretton Stop and back to near where we started.  En route, our Peter was explaining to me (like he does) how Einstein's special relativity theory helps explain why gold is that yellow colour.  I sort of understood it at the time, but a couple of hours later I cannot explain it to you, although if you Google it, you'll find that it's true!  Then I was going to polish the boat until I discovered the bottle of polish was empty.  So I had to sit and read instead. Quelle potage as Del Boy would say.

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