Thames in flood-Abingdon and Days Lock

Sunday 13 January 2013

 
Happy New Year to you all. Sorry I have not posted recently but nothing boaty has been going on. Although we did manage a quick trip to the boat in early December to put on the heaters.It was just as well as it was the cold week of the 11 December and the boat was frozen in.
 
Trips for 2013 hopefully will be up north with no restrictions due to water levels this year! Talking of which the level in the marina went up 18inches in November. Now that is some volume of water. Over Christmas in a slack period Simon and I worked out that the pound the marina is on is about 18 miles in length. It stretches from Napton to Hillmorton,Braunston bottom lock and Calcutt top lock. If you then assume the canal is on average 50ft wide thats about 189 million litres or 41.6 million gallons of water! - now that is some run off from the fields- the level then dropped back after 24 hours.
 
A few general pictures covering the last few months which include two at the end of our last trip back to the marina in October
 
Another great boat name- it does make you wonder why!
Coming back from Norton junction last October there is nearly always something outside Braunston Boats ,a real working boatyard, just past the bottom lock. Nb Pacific is a lovely old Stewarts & Lloyds tug.
We managed to tick off a place from our list- 4 nights in New York, towards the end of October. In fact we got one of the last flights out on the Saturday evening before the hurricane arrived on the Sunday.This is a view of the Empire State Building from the Rockefeller Building.
A view on Christmas day of Days Lock on the River Thames near Dorchester on Thames. The lock is on the left.
Looking down from Wittenham Clumps which over looks the Thames valley and Days Lock and showing the magnitude of the flooding.



Another view from Wittenham Clumps
A close up view of Days Lock.Water level is about 10ft up.Lock entrance behind the white cruiser.
The River Thames from Abingdon Bridge on Boxing day. We moored here on the left in June 2010, again water about 10ft higher than normal.