Views around the Oxford Summit
It even snows in spring. This is Easter, 1998 during the some of the worst floods to have hit the English Midlands in living memory. Of course, it turned to snow. Despite boats sinking on their moorings at Braunston and water running over the dam at Fenny Marina, we still had difficulty mooring on the summit pound of the Southern Oxford canal. We only had a Squirrel stove for heating on Swanmore, yet even when it was as cold as this, we were quite warm. Actually, not entirely true because this was the only time in the 3 years that we owned Swanmore that the fire went out - and that was mostly due to burning Anthracite which needs different treatment to the bitumous coal that I preferred to burn overnight. We'd been to Market Harborough over Easter and were having a worrying effect on the weather. Everywhere that we stopped - it flooded the next day. The odd looking lump on the back clearing off snow is me.
A familiar scene to travellers on the Oxford Canal. Officially, Swanmore wasn't "ours" when we took this picture ascending the locks at Napton. In fact, the hand-over wouldn't be for a further week during the Braunston Boat show. We were out on a "testing" cruise with strict instructions not to scratch the paint. We were trying to avoid too much attention from on-lookers (not easy when you have a brand new boat) as we were having some problems in getting our licence at this time. Swanmore was one of the first narrowboats built to the RCD regulations and was therefore CE marked. What made this amusing was the amount of paperwork required. Interestingly (or not), at the time we were sorting all this out with BW, I was negotiating an agreement at work that also required proof of CE compliance. We managed to convince BW that copies of the declarations would suffice (34 in total, each a piece of A4 paper), but my customer wanted copies of all test results as well as declarations - a collection of documents that eventually filled 3 filing cabinets.
Swanmore was ours now. This is at Braunston during the 1997 show. We got roped into coming along to the show as the proud owners. This could also be related to the fact that the builders had found out that I sold things for a living. They sold 3 boats that weekend.
"Canal Boat" magazine did a review of Swanmore in the August 1997 edition. These two pictures above were taken during that trial, as were the ones below. You can see that it is a tricky turn getting into the Marina under the footbridge. Just out of sight, and immediately opposite the entrance, is a large willow tree that frequently gets bashed as boats leave the marina.
This is the same day, along the summit of the Oxford, close to Fenny Compton Wharf. We used to look in amazement at grass in the field in the background, wondering why such good quality grass was used for grazing a few scraggy sheep. It was sometime later that we discovered that it is, in fact, a turf farm. Or for our American friends, a "sod" farm.
Turning at Fenny Wharf, opposite the eponymous pub. This isn't a winding hole, but a proper, full size wharf. Turning here can be amusing as, in their infinite wisdom, British Waterways have installed a waterpoint just about where Swanmore's stern is swinging. To the right of the picture (out of sight) is a brick arch bridge that is partially blind. We frequently came through that bridge (actually, there are 2 bridges - the original from when the canal was first built and a second, more modern bridge erected when the Banbury - Coventry road was improved in the 1960's) to find a winding boat blocking the cut. Even more amusing was when the wind blew and the turning boat was transformed into something with overall length of about 7 feet, but beam of about 70. Hence the derivation of the word "wind" to turn and why it is pronounced as in the stuff that blows and not as in what one does to a windlass to raise a paddle.
Here's the bridge mentioned above and a good view of the Wharf public house. The sky looks as though it has just been painted by Monet, but is shown "as is" without any clever effects. I think that this picture was actually used in the review article - anyway just a suggestion that it was got me free beer for the night in the pub
This picture has a surreal feeling to it as well. Just beyond Swanmore, a couple of BW "flats" can be made out. These were moored here for years. The story was that they had been brought up onto the summit for dredging (yes, really!) some time before Marston Doles top lock started to bulge and then couldn't be taken back that way to Braunston. Whether it's true or not, I don't know - but plenty of boats have had trouble in that lock before it was rebuilt.
These pictures show the quality of the paintwork. Even though the paint on Swanmore was just a couple of weeks old when these pictures were taken, the finish stayed like this for the next 3 years. The red was starting to age a little, but the shine was as good as new
