Day trip to Braunston

OK, you have to pay attention. Our dear James lost the will to live in the description. We had a coffee time in Braunston, mooring up there around 10:30, leaving around 12:30 and after passing so many moored boats and travellers, moored up back at Blue Haven just after 3pm. That's the headline. The detail is:

1. We bought our boat from Oxfordshire Narrowboats
2. When we got to Blue Haven nearly two years ago, we met Dom who runs Rugby Boat Sales.
3. We introduced Dom to lovely David Dare from Oxfordshire Narrowboats who wanted to sell others of his fleet to people like us.
4. Dom duly took on Chalford, a boat very like Bella and took photos of Bella to show what could be done with a boat like Chalford.
5. Dom subsequently sold Chalford to a "Woman Vicar" who wanted the boat just as it was to use for parish retreats.
6. Skip forward 12 months or so and Elizabeth is sitting in Aylesford Priory in Kent, happily greeting one of the URC ministers in their first few years in post, for whom Elizabeth is to some degree responisible in her work for the URC.
7. Said minister excitingly reports that she bought a narrowboat. Elizabeth enquires where it is kept and Jenny replied, with Elizabeth recalling that she knew the marina, having stopped there for fuel on the Paddington Arm.
8. When Elizabeth listened a little more, she asked - did the boat come from Oxfordshire Narrowboats? Yes. Was it purchased from Rugby Boat Sales? Yes. Was it the Chalford???? YES - so it was your boat we saw pictures of? Yes!
   
9. So the "Woman Vicar" is none other that Jenny, a URC minister.

And so, of course, the two boats, let alone the two ministers, had to meet on the water. And so we did - Jenny and Clive on Charis (Oxfordshire Narrowboat Chalford) and the two of us on Bella (Oxfordshire Narrowboat Heyford). Jenny and Clive had gone west on the Paddington Arm, south on the Grand Union Canal, west on the Thames and then north from Oxford. They were on their way east back to the Grand to then complete the circle south and looked, despite the rain, to be having a thouroughly grand time. And just to complete the connections, Jenny and Clive have narrowboat friends who moor up in Blue Haven Marina.....