On the morning of Wednesday 24th February 2021 we battled against a stiff wind through various locks and lift bridges from Aynho to Banbury where we moored up in the centre of town. Here we could stock up on our food and drink.
Vera with new blue The Duke narrowboat tag and a pirate outside Banbury Arts Centre. Here we had things to do for the first time. Filling up with water, which resulted in us buying a new Hozelock flexible hose from Wilko. Emptying the toilet cassette. The elsan emptying station at Banbury was blocked and we had to pour it into the toilet next door. A Canal & River Trust employee unlocked the toilet with his special key. They have to be kept permanently locked here due to rough sleepers and vandals.
We were disappointed to find that the M&S Food Hall by the canal had shut down permanently, the town centre in Banbury is looking very forlorn with all empty shopfronts. Hilary had to get a taxi to the out-of-town M&S Megastore, she wanted to walk but the dual carriageways and roundabouts had no facilities for walkers. We optimised our storage with crates from Wilko and made more room for ourselves on board.
Vera loved the park along the towpath where she had made some friends on our previous visit by narrowboat in 2019.
Our Huawei MiFi works a treat with our EE data SIM (unlimited data for £26 per month) and we have been streaming Netflix and BBC iPlayer. We have also been listening to BBC Radio 2 on my iPhone and via RadioPlayer on my Amazon Kindle Fire. This is being published from our whizzy new Dell Inspiron 14 5000 2-in-1 laptop. We have had great Freeview television reception once we moved away from the communication black hole that was Heyford Wharf.
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