25th July - Clifton Hampden

Lock Stats

Today: 5 locks
Grand total: 107 locks

To go: 172 locks

I was joined for breakfast by my Mum and Sister and we went in to Pangbourne for a slap up cooked breakfast.  My sister was to crew the boat for the rest of the time on the Thames.  We had our work cut out to get to Oxford in two days with NB Heathers 18hp engine working flat out.

 My sister in change of the boat

At Benson Lock we were treated to an aerobatic display thanks to the RAF Benson family fun day.  The great thing about the Thames is with few locks you can go flat out and try to cover the miles.  We did 17 miles on the 25th which is pretty good going.

RAF Benson Display

Trying to find a mooring at the end of the day was interesting to say the least, we had our eye out for moorings and their did seem to be spots where people were just moored on to fields.  There were two lots of moorings marked in the Nicholoson's guide in Clifton Hampden and I'd read about some moorings there on a blog.  As the blog I read had mentioned, there were two lots of moorings marked in Nicholsons and going upstream we struggled to see the moorings.  We decide to eventually risk mooring after the Clifton Hampden Bridge on the Right and found a small sign informing us to pay £4 for our mooring at the post office, all proceeds went to the local school PTA, what a lovely idea.

Clifton Hampden

Clifton Hampden is a charming village with thatched buildings being the standard.  There are a couple of pubs (one including a chineese resteraunt), in addition to the post office.  The village also obviously suffered from flooding as there were permanent duck boards.