If you’re going to wander around Oxford then the Saturday of Matriculation is probably not the best… as well as the usual thousands of foreign tourists (one hardly hears any English spoken) there are hundreds and hundreds of shiny new matriculating students milling around all in sub fusc, many with proud parents in tow.

Attendance is mandatory, and with college team photos at crack of sparrows, ceremonies in the Bodleian Library and Sheldonian Theatre, champagne receptions etc, etc. by the early afternoon the shiny newness is starting to wear off, as more and more of the freshers get progressively hammered. Still plenty wandering around in kit as the sun went down though, fortunately relief was at hand with a “splendid venue” solo concert in the Wesleyan Church from the blessed Karine Polwart.

Bit ambivalent about Oxford as a place to visit, but a few random pics from the many taken:

One just has to see the Bridge of Sighs, but it’s less obvious why they are threatening to remove the railings around the church.

The University Church is rather fine, with the highest viewpoint over the city, and an excellent cafe in the vaults. Unusual ceiling too, with the night and stars painted on.

We were puzzled by the Radcliffe Camera – part of the Bodleian Library (doesn’t look like an SLR to us), until we read the board which pointed out in small letters that camera is Italian for room. And Hertford College looks impressive from on high.

And as for the Hook Norton Brewery Dray… it wasn’t even one of their pubs!

Just off the hustle and bustle of Broad Street, Oxford, on a Friday afternoon, the gardens of Balliol College, Oxford’s oldest, provided a haven of peace and quiet for a while. The 400 year old Mulberry Bush/Tree somehow seemed so appropriate. Mind you, the notice in the entrance telling all the freshers that there was a mandatory team photo, in posh kit, at 08:30 on the Saturday morning was a bit of an eye-opener. New undergraduates + early Saturday morning + up and smartly dressed… does not compute.

Just after we cruise all around (I use the phrase advisedly) Didcot Power Station, there’s a huge fire.

Just after we leave our moorings at Abingdon Park, [cue Taggart] it seems there’s been a murder exactly where we were moored.

Hope things don’t really come in threes, but they’re forecasting serious gales and disruption tonight…

We’d passed the time of day with the narrowboat Magpies once or twice on the way up from Reading. We’d stopped in Wallingford after a very wet morning for food, ladies hair-dos and stuff and they’d been moored across the other side. So we were unsurprised when shortly after leaving Wallingford she slid in beside us to share Day’s Lock going up. It was unattended, so we both just held our boats stable with a single top rope each, intending to let them out as the water level rises.

They say you should never wrap a rope right round a bollard when you want to slip it, because is some circumstances the rope can jam… don’t think Magpies’ crew had read that bit. As the level went up, their top rope tightened, and started to tip the boat sideways. Looking round at the sound of crashing china falling off shelves, it was clear what was happening – their rope had jammed immovably.

It’s a big lock on electric power, and by the time we managed to lower the paddles and stop the water level increasing, Magpies was was heeled over by nearly 45 degrees, there was a horrendous crash as the microwave hit the floor, and it was in imminent danger of taking on water.

Letting some water out of the lock soon restored them to an even keel, the rope was unjammed, and hopefully a lesson learnt. We both moored up above the lock, us for lunch, them to clear up, I guess. They set off before us, and – failing to make Abingdon that day – we moored overnight at Culham Lock. But the next morning we found them safely moored at Abingdon with the stove alight, so I guess no serious harm done. The black boat moored behind us is Magpies.

A salutary lesson – you can’t let your attention wander for a second. Another few seconds and it could have been a serious incident. There but for fortune…

Actually, the journey from Wallingford  to Abingdon is a bit weird: the river does some huge loops around without ever obviously going round sharp corners. So the ever-present (half-a) Didcot Power Station looming on the horizon in the mist, low cloud and rain keeps appearing in odd places. One minute it’s back over your left shoulder, the next it’s off the starboard bow. Then it’s somewhere else. All very unnerving.

As we approach the end of this year’s wanderings, a man’s thoughts naturally turn to the boat winterisation chores we’ll have to do at the end of the cruise, and the chores we never got around to on the house that will need sorting out when we get home. The garden’s a bit overrun, and  anyone who has visited in the last few years will know we need a new garden shed.

On the run-in to the centre of Reading we found just the thing. Could give a whole new slant to “I’m just nipping out to the shed, darling”.

From the river, the Reading metropolis passes surprisingly quickly. At the rural Mapledurham Lock It’s hard to realise that the big city is so close.

As you approach the shiny new renovated Whitchurch Bridge, now open to road traffic  again, the fields are full of hundreds of sheep. Except that those sheep all appear to have been indulging in neck-stretching like some of those Kayan ladies who live in the Burmese/Thai borderlands, and it dawns that they aren’t sheep at  all, but alpacas. Hundreds of them. Seems it’s one of the biggest alpaca farms in the country.

And then the weather breaks with a vengeance, and we bail out onto an Environment Agency mooring at Goring Lock then went for a wander. Goring seems to have a village green surrounded by a brick wall which strikes us as unusual, (and the village sign is up-to-date, featuring a red kite), as well as an excellent small hotel that serves lovely food even on a Sunday evening. Take a bow, The Miller of Mansfield. Even more surprising, on a dark, wet, late Sunday afternoon, was an art gallery/exhibition that was still open, and staffed by the artists themselves, both of whom (Carolyn Tyrer and Howard Birchmore) had folky connections and it turned out we had friends and acquaintances in common. It’s a small world.