As we walked from the Oxford to Kidlington bus to return to our boat in the middle of the afternoon Henk said to me, “I’ll be looking forward to seeing how you write this one up!”. Well, today our beloved camera decided to suicide by drowning. As I was jogging along the tow path between the locks the camera decided to jump out of its little velcroed leather pouch, bounce on the bitumen, bounce onto the grass and then plopped itself into the canal. It only took a nanosecond! Henk saw it happen from the boat. We both couldn’t believe it. Henk brought the boat in and we tried desperately to pluck it from about a metre of water with the boat’s pole. At one stage we got to see the chord as we brought it up but it slipped away again. The water was so murky it was hopeless. I was bereft.
At the next lock we told one of the boaties that we had lost the camera and he said it was a shame to lose all our holiday photos. I explained we had downloaded them all to our little computer. “Well, your lucky.” he said. “Is it insured?” “Yes, I said.” “Well, your lucky.” he said. And it made me realise that we were lucky and all we really needed to do was to buy another camera.
We stopped at next town of Kidlington and caught a bus back to Oxford. It took twenty minutes by bus and we had spent three hours on the canal to get to Kidlington. We bought our new camera at a store called Argos which is an interesting way to shop. All they have in their store front are quite a number of counters with large catalogues. We chose our replacement camera from the catalogue, went to the check-out and paid, they gave us a number and when the camera had been brought out of storage we collected it. It took about ten minutes. We took longer to buy a replacement camera bag. This time it has a zip and no Velcro! We then decided to eat lunch at Oxford before returning to Kidlington. The whole exercise took two hours and fifteen minutes and we didn’t think we would see Oxford again so soon!
And so the photos being displayed on this blog page are being provided by the new Canon Powershot SX 120. We wondered when the old camera and its memory card would be found. Maybe in 2000 years!
We left Oxford at eight thirty and arrived at Lower Heyford at seven o’clock. We went from the wide Thames River onto the narrow Oxford Canal. For the first time in weeks we are back to single locks and for the first time in over a week I am back to doing manual locks with my trusty windlass. We are also going up in the locks and I am filling them as we rise from the Thames to Napton. We also went through quite a number of lift bridges which are a challenge as they are all operate differently.
We saw quite a variety of wildlife today including squirrels, a paddock full of pheasants and some deer.
It is getting dark earlier and when we set out for the pub for dinner we had to use a torch for the first time. It was an overcast day today but the forecast for the next three days is not looking great.
Photos: Henk going under a lift bridge; Late afternoon on the canal; The narrow Oxford Canal; Autumn trees.
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