Our 2nd week!

Last evening we had a visit from friends Marcy and Phil, who travelled in to see us while we’re still “trapped” in Oxford.  We had a great meal at ‘Fire and Stone’ (the third time we’ve been there in the last week!)

Doug, James, Marcy and Phil.

Today was the start of our second week in Oxford and we did our usual thing of checking the river levels (it’s gone down half a brick!) but the flow is still too much.  The lock keeper wasn’t available when we got to Osney Lock (the river lock) but the yellow board had replaced the red one (stream decreasing).  However, there are still a lot of red boards between here and Reading, which is where we need to get.

We continued our walk along the river to Folly Bridge and back into the city centre.  Our walk up St Aldates took us past Tom Tower and the main entrance to Christchurch College.  Every evening at 9:05 the bell in the tower tolls 101 times as a curfew to represent the original 101 scholars of the college.  “Oxford time” is 5 minutes behind GMT hence the bells tolls at 9:05.

Further up St Aldates is the magnificent Town Hall.

The rest of the day was spent doing exciting things like Doug doing clothes washing and drying while James checked over the engine in readiness for the (hoped for) opportunity to get onto the river in the next few days.  After that it was a very slow walk with Oscar down to the canal lock – which our river companion guide calls Louse Lock but which the BW board, next to the lock, calls Isis Lock. So it’s officially Isis Lock.