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We’re raising money for Help for Heroes – please take a moment to show your support.

A Musical Treat!

You may have heard, or read on this blog, about the musical spectacular that was a fine gentleman tinkling the ivories of an upright piano aboard two punts on the river Cam as they were majestically steered by our crew.  Don’t believe me?  Well take a look for yourself!  A huge thank you to Ed Emery for the idea and kind loan of piano, and to Travis Winstanley (in the video) and Aaron Preston (who featured later) for playing the piano.  Bravo!  Please feel free to contribute more silly ideas, we do like having fun.

We want your photos!

As you may have read our camera disappeared. So, if you have photos please get in touch, we’d love to see them! You can email td296@cam.ac.uk – thanks!

Day 12 – The Other Place

Today started in an unusually relaxed fashion. It was a bit bizarre to think that we would never be doing this again, and a little sad too. We have had a lot of fun on this trip, it has been a fantastic adventure. We rolled along in the normal fashion, popping ourselves through a few locks along the way. It was a little odd having to explain to people that we weren’t from Oxford at all – we really had come 200 miles from Cambridge. Tragedy struck at the 11th hour as Andy casually dropped the windlass into the punt, it caught the rim of Beckie’s hat, and flipped her previously safely placed glasses into the canal. Beckie was asleep so there was a brief window of opportunity to retrieve them on the sly. Andy stripped and started feeling around whilst Toby distracted Beckie as she woke up. Things weren’t looking up so we came clean and the three lads all got into the canal whilst Beckie found clean towels. The boys felt gingerly with their feet through the twigs, bikes, broken glass and other detritus – don’t go in canals, it’s rough. As things were looking down Karl’s eyes suddenly brightened, and his foot emerged victorious from the murky water, glasses clutched between his toes. Hoorah! We dried off, applied antiseptic liberally after the many warnings from passers by about weils disease, and set off again. We eventually rolled by an Oxford punt hire and pulled into the Head of the River, encouraged by a rousing cheer from the people sitting in the garden. Three takes later and Karl and Andy finally got it right for the camera. We did a few interviews and then had a delicious pub lunch courtesy of the Marshall clan. We handed the punt over to Steve from Balliol Boat House who is kindly looking after the punt until the trailer arrives, and then headed to Chloe’s house. Chloe is a school friend of Karl, and very kindly putting us up for a few days.

Plans now are to sleep, sleep some more, and maybe do a little punting around Oxford. We’ve had a fantastic time and would like to say a huge thank you to everyone who has donated to Help for Heroes, hosted us for a night, or just showed us a spontaneous act of kindness. You guys have made this trip for us – thank you. If you’re ever in Cambridge, give us a ring, we’d love to return the favour!

Day 11 – lock and roll

Today started in a relaxed fashion. We knew this was our day in hand so we made our way at an early but more reasonable time to Pigeon Lock. Sadly on arrival we discovered our camera had disappeared, we expect at the lock above cropredy where we stayed. Beckie and Karl stayed to lock people through while Andy and Toby went on a hopeful, but realistically speaking pointless, trip up the river to have a search. Whilst locking people through we stumbled upon Chris who had punted from Oxford to Cambridge some years ago. He brought us some drinks and ice cream and we sat and had lunch before Chris took us down the canal. We’ve moored up for an early night by the Jolly Boatman in Thrup. We are really looking forward to our arrival tomorrow and sleeping on dry land!

LOST CAMERA

After reaching Pigeon Lock we discovered our camera had gone missing. So Andy and Toby are walking back to find it. It’s somewhere on the oxford canal between napton and pigeon lock. It is a black olympus waterproof camera probably in a blue case, there are lots of pictures of a punt on it. If found please call 07909 746 502.

Glorious Arrival – the details

We shall arrive in Oxford at the Head of the River pub at approximately 2pm. All well wishers and press are welcome. See you there!

Day 10 – i scream, you scream

We awoke today to a misty river which looked magical in rhe morning light. We got set into today’s hard slog. Sadly we had to refuse a few cups of tea in order to press on. We locked through and chatted with many people at locks. We finally ate a cornetto, as many people have said we should. We also tried somw super tasty napton buffalo ice cream. Shortly after this tasty treat there was a steering blunder and Beckie caught the top of her pole on a swing bridge. Valiantly trying to not drop the pole she tried to swing it round but to no avial and plopped into the water. In a chivalrous, but hopeless, attempt to help Toby also ended up in the river. This proved not to be a problem as we soon dried in the roasting sunshine. We continued on and were given some cold drinks as we waited to lock through with Owen and Jacky from Pipsqueak. As we were moving along later in the day we met another old locking through companion, Frank, who dashed out to give us a delicious ice lolly. We met Pipsqueak again later and they helped us with some valuable local knowledge of Oxford – more of that next. We shared a cup of tea before moving on for the night, having some sweet and sour corned beef, and settling down. As we haven’t used our contingency today, tomorrow’s plan is to spend the day at Pigeon Lock locking people through and returning favours, please come and say hello!

Day 9 – hot (day) and sticky (bottom)

The Oxford Canal felt slow going as the bottom was deep sticky mud, however we soldiered on. Through persistent, and relentless, punting we made good time. The canal was much less busy than the Union, so we had a quiet day in the baking sun. Today was a scorcher. This was an older section of canal so wound round the hill following contours rather than using large flights of locks. After a good long run we descended a few locks to moor up just short of Cropredy for the night.

Wigrams Turn Marina and the Warwickshire Inland Waterways Association

We were offered hot showers and the very unexpected chance to wash our clothes, which we jumped at. Clean and with our clothes in the dryer we gathered around the barbeque and enjoyed another perfect summer evening with the kind hospitality which has become such a highlight of the trip. It has made every long day feel worthwhile and has given us the motivation to push on when uncertain. The opportunity to sleep on a narrow boat was very exciting for us, and gave us our best night’s sleep so far. We would also like to thank all those present for their kind donations and words of support.

The next morning we made a special effort to be up early as we had arranged to meet the local Inland Waterways Association members at the base of the Napton lock flight at 7:30. A short punt from the marina got us there on time and we were grateful to see a keen crowd of helping hands ready to lock us through. It made a huge difference being taken through, both for having most of the work done for us, and for the opportunity to talk to people who are really enthusiastic about the waterways, and are veritable mines of esoteric information about narrow boating and the canals. We parted ways some nine locks later after a few punting lessons had been exchanged for many generous donations, and made our way off along the twisting Oxford canal.

We really cannot thank those who have helped us on our way, and been so genrous to H4H so far enough.

Day 8 – narrow boat day

A good day today. We Set off from Weedon Bec for the lock flight up to Braunston Tunnel, in good time to meet Steve Wright of Eclipse for our tow through the tunnel. It was easy to spot Steve in his 70 foot behemoth of a working boat, Eclipse. We enjoyed the relaxed pace of life as we puttered along behind Steve at the tiller of Eclipse, approaching the tunnel. The tunnel it turns out, may be a tight fit for narrow boats, but it was too wide and high for us to be able to leg it – without doubt we needed the tow. Deep in the eerie gloom of the tunnel, we felt it appropriate to belt out a rendition of ‘Jeruslalem’, competing with the noise of the engine.

Braunston Historic Boat Rally turned out to be a huge affair – the working boats moored five abreast along the canal, just leaving room for one boat at a time to creep past. We arrived in time to sneak into the parade of classic narrow boats. Being announced to the crowd and getting a round of applause as we passed was a high point of a great day. A big thank you to the generous folk at the rally for all the money they donated to Help for Heros!

We overtook a narrow boat! A crazy horse narrow boat! Only to be reovertaken as the river straightened and there were less moored boats around, a very civilised exchange! Arriving at Wigrams Turn Marina we were greeted with the honking of horns and the enthusiastic waving of hands.