{"id":1444,"date":"2017-07-03T22:00:44","date_gmt":"2017-07-03T21:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/toby200.net\/oliver\/?p=1444"},"modified":"2017-07-03T22:04:03","modified_gmt":"2017-07-03T21:04:03","slug":"a-great-spot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/toby200.net\/oliver\/?p=1444","title":{"rendered":"A Great Spot"},"content":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s plan was to stop off in Wallingford (aka Causton in Midsommer Murders), do some shopping and a bit of site seeing and then find a nice country mooring.\u00a0 There are plenty shown in Pearson.\u00a0 But on this stretch of The Thames Pearson is about as much good as a chocolate teapot when it comes to moorings.\u00a0 They may show lots but they simply do not exist and many of the banks are very shallow in the edges.<\/p>\n

So the first part of the plan went very smoothly.\u00a0 It was a lovely day.\u00a0 There were very few boats and we almost had the river to ourselves.<\/p>\n

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Alone on The Thames<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

We had a relaxed lunch on board while moored in Wallingford and then started to meander our way along the river.\u00a0 We passed yoghurt pot heaven at Benson the home of Le Boat.<\/p>\n

Wallingford Bridge boasts 17 arches but only 5 span the river and I could not manage to get any more than those shown below in one picture. \u00a0I think I managed 11.<\/p>\n

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Wallingford Bridge<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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The Town Hall, Wallingford<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Le Boat – Plastique<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

At 15:15 Romy experienced, what for her, has been the highlight of the whole trip.\u00a0 She saw the first kingfisher she has ever seen.\u00a0 This highly cooperative bird actually made a circuit of Oliver just for her.\u00a0 We also saw quite a number of red kites and a couple of herons.<\/p>\n

We were happy in the knowledge that moorings were numerous until, one after the other, we realised that they were figments of someone\u2019s imagination.\u00a0 Passing Clifton Hampden we had visions of carrying on to Abingdon.<\/p>\n

At Clifton Lock we struck some bad luck.\u00a0 The lock was self service and the previous boat had messed it up so the electrics were not working.\u00a0 It took a lot of turns of the wheels to work it manually but we managed.\u00a0 While we were waiting Peter was looking at the possibility of mooring on the lock bollards after exiting the lock and to his great surprise and joy he found that there was an official 24 hour mooring with space for two boats.\u00a0 A yp was already there but there was just room for Oliver.\u00a0 It is a lovely mooring in a delightful well protected spot, probably one of the best of the trip so far.\u00a0 We reported to the Lock Keeper, as there is supposed to be a charge for the mooring, but he said he was on leave!\u00a0 He said if we leave early, which we do most days, we will be gone before the morning shift arrives at 9am.<\/p>\n

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Clifton Lock<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Oh! What a lovely mooring<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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And it’s legit!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The hickory smoked beef bought earlier from Waitrose made a very tasty dish for dinner.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Today\u2019s plan was to stop off in Wallingford (aka Causton in Midsommer Murders), do some shopping and a bit of site seeing and then find a nice country mooring.\u00a0 There are plenty shown in Pearson.\u00a0 But on this stretch of The Thames Pearson is about as much good as a chocolate teapot when it comes … Continue reading A Great Spot<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1444","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bristol-2017"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8PLyH-ni","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/toby200.net\/oliver\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/toby200.net\/oliver\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/toby200.net\/oliver\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toby200.net\/oliver\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toby200.net\/oliver\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1444"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/toby200.net\/oliver\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1447,"href":"https:\/\/toby200.net\/oliver\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1444\/revisions\/1447"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/toby200.net\/oliver\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1444"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toby200.net\/oliver\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1444"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/toby200.net\/oliver\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1444"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}