Banbury.

We finally reached Banbury. It consisted of more fields for a while:

And we discovered that the father-in-law made a good anchor:

Boaters are generally peaceful folk. It takes a lot to get us angry, I mean, we HAVE to be patient as it takes so long to get anywhere. But, every now and then there is a very inconsiderate boater who spends most of his time on the water trying to annoy everyone else. Just our luck to meet him. The tiller man from Rosamund The Fair - Oxfordshire's delightful restaurant boat. Oh, how many boaters shouted at him. Personally, I could have lamped him one. He stopped to wind (turn) in front of us, took 20 minutes before going ahead of us at a speed of 0.002 mph and STOPPED in the middle of the canal to tell his mate on the tow path that he was being an ass to piss us off. I'm a patient person - I work in care with people with behavioural problems, I HAVE to be patient - but the only thing that prevented me from attempting to smack him was the expanse of water between us.

Anyway, back to our journey! We eventually reached the heart of Banbury to the sound of a haunting folk melody from a nearby cafe:

And finally found somewhere to moor for the evening (beside a nest of flying ants):

We made the in-laws walk the plank let mum and dad in-law go home.

And Lolly decided to go exploring - we finally found her after 4 hours stuck up a tree. Silly thing. She's a good climber but I'm beginning to think she is scared of heights. After all that, we settled to watch the sun set and climbed exausted into bed.

Tomorrow we take the boat to Tooley’s Boatyard.