Beware mooring in Banbury

IT WOULD seem that the Oxford Canal below Napton is not a very friendly place to moor, as now, three people have told us of the attitude of other boaters.

In addition to these reports by boaters of being accosted, our own Keith Gudgin tells us it is the only place in his many years of continuously cruising that he has been threatened by another boater, and pulling into a vacant mooring in Banbury, relates:

High on something

It's the only place I've ever been physically threatened on the canals by another boater because he said I was pinching his mooring—it was after all a 48 hours visitor mooring in Banbury so I should have realised that it must have been used as a continuous moorers permanent mooring spot. He looked like a bog rat with matted hair and was high on something as he was red in the face with dilated eyes.

As I was mooring up for the night he came running along the towpath shouting that I could not moor there. When I pointed out that the place was a 48 hours visitor mooring, and I was right next to one of the totem poles telling me that, he said, or should I say, screamed:

Two years!

"If you don't shift your f***ing boat I gonna kick your f***ing head in, I'm only up there getting f***ing water and this is my f***ing mooring spot. I've been here for two f***ing years."

I can still see him gesticulating at me as he blew his top—comical sight he was, but I thought dangerously unpredictable that's why I left as I did not want my ropes cut or worse. Was back in Cropredy by the evening and on the Grand Union next day—never to return.