Another grand day on Old Father Thames.

We left Caversham yesterday (Tuesday) after good byes and thanks to Del and Al for a great meet.

As we said earlier, the views from the river are wonderful …..

…….. and, as also mentioned, the river banks regularly have something of interest – like this field full of Alpacas.

The weir at Goring is very attractive (as weirs go!) but the amount of water going over the top is pretty minimal during this dry spell.

This lovely old boathouse is a home as well. Where else can you find stuff like this?

Having started late today we cruised on into the evening and found this mooring at the Shillingford Bridge Hotel.  There was even £25 left on the electricity meter so Doug did a couple of loads of washing!

Today we started at 9 o’ clock with a rendezvous organised just upstream.  This bend in the river holds ‘happy’ memories for James – it was here that he grounded “Chance” last time we came this way. They’ve installed an orange buoy now!

We spotted this bird quite a way off and thought we hadn’t seen anything like it before on the river (maybe we’ve not been looking). Does anyone know what it is? No its not a heron…

At 9:30 we achieved our rendezvous aka – Vic and Sue an nb “No Problem”. We breasted up with them where the River Thame enters the Thames for a coffee and a catch-up chat.  It was lovely to meet up with them again.

We left Sue and Vic to their downstream journey and continued upwards – soon reaching Clifton Hamden and the lovely old six arched brick bridge.

With a couple more locks at Clifton Hamden and Culham under our belts we got to Abingdon. This, sadly, is the only part of the wharf frontage we could get without the gambit of a load of permanent moorers.

Spent almost an hour waiting for the water point above the lock and by the time we’d taken on water we thought it prudent to call it a day.  With all the visitor moorings above the lock free we had no problems tying up and settling in.

Later we were invited by Rich and Andy on nb Carpe Diem to meet in the Nags Head for drinks and a chat.