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Both were wearing acid yellow, hand-knitted jumpers in fantastic 1970s style with the yoke, cuffs and hem in bright blue, green and red Austrian-patterned wool. They were eye-searingly painful to look at, but you couldn't stop your eyes being dragged back, screaming, to stare at these jumpers, which, had it been night time, would surely have glowed in the dark. On a couple of occasions I caught Sam staring and, as he opened his mouth with a slight frown, I kicked him gently on the shin and shook my head at him, putting my finger up to my lips.

‘Shhhh, no personal comments remember.'

Charlie had far more problems with that restriction and kept sniggering, even as she made frantic hand movements that were supposed to imply, ‘I am trying to stop, I just caaaaan't.'

The only way we could stop her laughing aloud was for Geoff to give her a blow-by-blow account of how black pudding was made. This at least accomplished the desired effect of stopping her laughing, but also made her turn slightly green and pass the offending foodstuff quickly over to his plate. Geoff was happy – he had Charlie's, Sam's, mine and his own. I sometimes wonder if he needs to put quite so much detail into the explanation of black pudding, but it always has the desired effect. Looking at the huge pile of food on his plate, I actually found myself wondering if I was going to have to send Charlie back to the boat for the sack trolley.

We all lingered over tea and coffee, and I noticed Arthur and Martha of the screaming jumpers get up to leave. Silence fell once again as all eyes were fastened on the painful knitwear. We all watched them climb the steps and heave themselves out on to the tow path, where they wandered on, hand in hand, toward the local marina. I really hope that, at their later time of life, they were going a bit deaf, as the sound of hysterical laughter from about 12 people, even muffled inside a narrow boat, must surely have reached them as they went on their way.

Three hours later, re-filled with water, we had visited Midland Chandlers and had installed a new chimney, Charlie was lolling around in the bath (I figured our bath was too shallow for her to drown through stomach cramps after such a huge meal) and we were on our way again.

I was excited to leave Braunston as we would be heading in a totally different direction; new things to see, new people to meet and new things to collide with – great!

Chapter Thirty-one
Pastures New

A
S WE TRAVELLED,
I noticed the winding hole that had been the limit of our training day with Dave. Ah, if only he could see us now: experienced, competent and still running into things and trying to sink our boat.

So, now in uncharted territory, we headed toward the first of the Napton Locks. There were a lot of boats moored along the side of the canal, some in horrendous condition, with broken windows and huge sheets of paint flaking into the river, yet still with obvious signs of live-aboard activity. I still can't work out whether these people live in this condition because they want to. If they do, that is fine – it's their choice – and if they choose to live that sort of alternative lifestyle, I may not agree with it, but they have the right to do it. However, if they have to live in these vessels because the choice is either that or the streets, due to the high cost of housing and all the other rubbish that goes along with life these days, then it is so far off acceptable it's unreal.

Looking at some of these living quarters, I remembered how I felt about Happy when we first looked at her. At least she had been clean, dry and warm – in fact, compared to some of these she was a veritable luxury cruise liner and I felt slightly ashamed at being so horrified.

With these thoughts in mind, I noted the approach of the top lock and took over driving from Geoff so that he, as usual, could do all the heavy stuff. This is another thing I had noted that we do differently from 75 per cent of all the other river users, especially the holiday-makers; it is usually the bloke who drives and the poor woman who is left leaping about trying to open the locks.

After long experience, we have worked out that I am certainly better at getting Happy through small spaces than Geoff is; it may be that I have perfect eyesight, whereas Geoff is slightly long-sighted, or it may be that I just have better depth perception. Whatever the reason, eight times out of ten, I can bring Happy into a tiny lock pound without touching the sides and bring her to a stop without hammering her into the lock gates at the end. Geoff tends to bring her in like a pinball.

Geoff, on the other hand, can open a lock much, much quicker than I can, as he is stronger and faster. Consequently, we approach locks like it's war, leaping about on dry land and keeping the boat rock steady, and we can be through in the fastest time possible – sometimes we even have time to laugh at other people, just a little, before we go and help.

I took a second look at the lock ahead of us. Even by single-boat canal standards, this one seemed awfully small and I slowed down further to make sure I was completely lined up. This was one of the eight times out of ten, and she went in straight as a die.

With about 10 foot of her 70-foot length inside the lock, she stopped. I waved at Geoff who was chatting to another boater at the far gate.

‘I'm stuck!'

He wandered toward me, followed by the other boater (whose name was Marty, we later found out), both looking confused.

‘Look,' I pointed at the front. ‘I'm stuck. Have a look and see what she's caught on, can you?'

Geoff and Marty peered into the pound.

‘I can't see anything,' Geoff stepped on to the roof and jumped up and down. ‘Look, she's moving.'

‘Well, she may be moving up and down,' I grumped, gunning the engine, ‘but she's certainly not going forward.'

Geoff scratched his head and jumped back on to dry land. He wandered to the edge of the lock and looked over the back gates to see if anything had caught us there, no ... nothing evident.

‘Try reversing her back out,' he suggested.

I shrugged and bunged Happy into reverse. There was a swashing, scraping noise and then she began to reverse.

Geoff watched and then laughed. ‘It's the fenders,' he said, pointing down the side of the lock. ‘This lock is so narrow, with the fenders down, we're stuck.'

Good grief, he was right. Happy was seven foot six and the lock was obviously just over eight foot wide; with the fenders down we had become stuck like a cork in a bottle. I remember Dave saying something about fenders and locks, but we had never been in a lock smaller than about nine foot wide so it had never been an issue.

Geoff jumped on to the boat and, as I pulled her back to free water, he ran around and lifted all the fenders to lie, dripping the slime and weed that they had picked up from their scrape along the lock walls, all the over the roof.

By this time, with all our faffing about, we had monopolised the lock for far too long and the queue either side had become extensive, with lots of owners peering at us, trying to work out what the hell we were doing. Looking back at the ever-increasing line behind us, I noticed that every one of them had their fenders already on the roof. Ah well, you learn by experience. With Marty's help, we bashed through the lock in double quick time and shot out the other side. With red faces, we desperately tried not to notice that the line was now so huge the moorings were full and newcomers were trying to hold their boats in mid-stream with little success. And there seemed to be a fair few bumps and curses. Whoops, sorry.

It soon became very, very apparent that we were one of the biggest and the slowest things on the canal and it didn't take very long for me to become used to the look of wide-eyed terror on the faces of the oncoming pilots, as they emerged around tight corners and came face to face with us coming the other way.

As they came fully alongside, we still had another 30 foot trailing out behind and they would stare as we kept going and going, watching us as we disappeared behind them. Being so large and heavy, we were also very slow and much less manoeuvrable than the smaller holiday boats. It was this lack of manoeuvrability and our length that caused me the biggest headache on this leg of the journey.

British Waterways were busy doing some work under one of the bridges between locks and, with their workboat moored under the bridge, it made the canal excruciatingly narrow. Geoff was driving; we had two boats behind us and could see a line of three coming the other way. Geoff frowned for a moment and, taking in the scene of the workboat, the very narrow gap and all the traffic, completely out of character for him, he just gunned the engine and narrowed his eyes.

I was totally confused; this wasn't like Geoff at all. Taking a straight line, he whooshed through the gap and, with a nifty bit of steering, manoeuvred around the oncoming boats and out along the now empty canal. It was only past the boats that he slowed down and we looked behind us.

‘I thought that was likely to happen,' Geoff muttered.

I looked over my shoulder and was horrified at the scene of chaos and disaster under the bridge. The narrow boats behind us had followed us through and the oncoming ones had also made a try for the gap; they had all collided abreast of the workmen. The bridge amplified sounds of screaming, shouting and swearing, and the squeal and crunch of tortured metal followed us in a guilt-inducing wave down the river for far longer than it had any right to.

‘That's going to screw up some precious paint jobs,' Geoff grinned.

I looked at him. ‘Did we do anything to cause that?' I asked, still staring back at the chaotic, noisy huddle stuck under the bridge.

‘For once, no,' Geoff ticked off the reasons on his fingers. ‘One, our bow was under the bridge by a long way before any of the others tried to come through, so it's our right of way; two, I just wanted to get Happy out of the way, which is why I shot through, can you imagine something this size snarled sideways in amongst that lot?'

I looked back and shuddered. ‘Unfortunately, yes.' We looked at each other and burst out laughing, and we were still sniggering and giggling when a sharp bend crept up on us and we had to restore order enough to deal with yet another bloody lock; at least this was the last one of the day. I remember thinking our first day on the Oxford Canal had been memorable, if not entirely successful.

Unlike other places that we had visited, mooring on the Oxford was an absolute delight; with miles and miles of tow path, you just decided where you wanted to stop, pulled over, drove in some stakes and there you stayed. Fantastic.

The next morning, Geoff and I were up and about early, as had become our normal routine. I still loved these early mornings, which had become more delightful as autumn started to arrive. They gave us time to potter about, have a cup of tea on the back of the boat while wrapped up nice and warm and I think both of us really cherished these few quiet morning hours before chaos and destruction threw themselves whinging out of bed, demanding food and entertainment.

This morning started out exactly the same as all the previous ones on this trip with the addition of mist so thick we couldn't actually see Happy's nose from where we were standing on the back plate. We stood with our tea and toast, resplendent in woolly hats, gloves and big overcoats, gently yawning and leaning on each other, trying to discuss the day ahead but really just enjoying the peace and quiet.

Geoff put his tea down on the engine room sliding hatch and, frowning, stared hard into the thick swirling mist.

‘What the hell is that?' he asked, pointing over the canal.

‘What?' I leant round him and tried to see what he was pointing out to me.

‘That!' He jabbed a finger into the mist, and, slowly, I could start to make out a hulking, dark figure standing silent and still in the mist.

We both froze, breath puffing in clouds, further obscuring the view, and stared at the mist-covered apparition. It was sort of cow shaped, or at least it would have been if it hadn't been sporting a small hump on its huge, black back and what appeared to be at least three foot of black horn sweeping out sideways away from its head, parodying the caricatured plaits on a cartoon Swiss milk maid – certainly not a Friesian or a Jersey then.

Staying quiet, we waited as the animal turned its head and took a long sniff of the morning air; it then started to make its stately way down to the water's edge. Further dark shapes appeared out of the mist, all with the same hump and majestic horns, although none boasting quite the breadth of the first one.

‘Water buffalo,' Geoff whispered.

Not knowing why we were whispering, I spoke up. ‘Don't be ridiculous, what are water buffalo doing in bloody Warwickshire? They're native to India and I don't think they swim, well actually they do, but they wouldn't swim from India.'

At the sound of my raised voice, the animals looked up and then, as one, turned and wandered back into the mist.

‘I don't know,' he shrugged, ‘but they were definitely water buffalo.'

We stood and watched the alien animals disappear into the mist, both confused by what we had seen. In the thick mist and being still slightly dopey in the early morning, it was a very surreal experience. It wasn't until three months later that I actually found out there is a farm in Napton that has a herd of over 80 of the things. I'm not sure whether I was relieved or a little disappointed; I had sort of hoped that the mist hid an inter-dimensional rift or something. Sigh, no such luck.

By 11 o'clock the mist had thinned sufficiently for us to be on our way. Chaos and Disorder had woken up and life was back to normal. It was a very short run to Napton's top lock, and I must have been still either partially asleep, or still thinking about water buffalo, because as we exited the lock, I was going too fast, couldn't make the sharp right-hand bend back onto the canal and ploughed Happy's nose straight into a wall. Oh yes, definitely back to normal.

Unfortunately, this one little accident set the tone of the travel conditions for the next couple of days. Being used to piloting on a wide, deep river, I had, I have to admit, had some problems with the narrow waterways. This stretch of the Oxford Canal was particularly problematic, as it had some seriously nasty curves in it. Your average 35-footer would find it merely inconvenient but we, or more specifically ‘I', found it a right royal pain in the proverbial.

Not only did I have to remember to sound the horn at every opportunity, to let everybody within a mile radius know that a big blob was coming through, but I became more and more angry that bloody holiday-makers didn't do the same. Crowds of them sitting on top of their boat would come into view without returning our horn sounds, but as we had heard nothing, we had assumed that there was no one about and had powered on forward toward an upcoming bridge. After assuming wrongly twice, we went through exactly the same list of events:

• Notice bridge coming up around a corner
  
• Sound horn loud and long
  
• Listen
  
• Hear nothing
  
• Increase speed and head for the centre of the bridge to minimise bank effect
  
• Notice smaller holiday, hooligan-filled narrow boat closing from the other direction
  
• Notice that they are not slowing down and haven't even noticed us (all boats look the same length head-on)
  
• Watch them helplessly realise that we are twice their length, half as manoeuvrable and stuck with nowhere to go under a bloody bridge.
  
• Watch them throw beer cans in the air and rush around trying to stop their craft
  
• Listen to a fair amount of verbal abuse along the lines of ‘bloody river rats' and ‘that thing's too big'
  
• Have a shouted conversation regarding horns
  
• Listen to their replies, which basically could be summed up as ‘the rules of the river don't apply to us'
  
• Stick two fingers up at them and carry on past, while smirking and watching them trying to get their boat out of the mud at the side of the bridge.
  

Getting yourself spaced as evenly as possible between the bridge pillars to minimise bank effect is a good thing to do, especially if the bridge is very small. I always managed to achieve this and I think only on one occasion managed to really screw it up, causing our back end to rub across the bridge pilings.