Our mooring is quiet, with lovely peaceful views from the windows. However, once a year, over the August Bank Holiday weekend, the fields and farms around us are transformed for a three- or four-day music festival. I am sure that years ago, when Patrick and I were young and up for a weekend of music, rain, mud and tents, we would simply have joined in. But the years have caught up with us, and the only "roughing it" we do now is skipping the occasional shower because the water tanks are getting low, the next refill is a few locks away and obviously, we're reserving the water for the dishwasher and the ice maker.
So, with the festival set up and thousands of late teens and twenty-somethings beginning to arrive, we packed up and decided to go away for the weekend.
We needed fuel first, which meant a quick trip downriver through one lock before turning around and heading back upstream. Our plan was Goring-on-Thames for Saturday night, Wallingford for Sunday night, then home on Monday — by which time we hoped the festival would be packing up too.
Saturday — Reading to Goring
We left early Saturday morning and headed downriver for a quick fuel top-up. Once this weekend was over, we would be heading down to London for a boat show, and our route meant we'd be passing the very few fuel berths available to us outside their operating hours.
So fuel now it was.
Once we'd made a considerable dent in our wallets, we turned Deux Poissons around and headed upriver, through Mapledurham and Whitchurch locks, towards Goring-on-Thames. We reached Goring around lunchtime and found a mooring surprisingly quickly. It was one of those little signs that summer was beginning to draw to a close: fewer hire boats on the river and more space available at the moorings. Hire boaters tend to leave a generous amount of space between themselves and the next boat. I expect it takes experience — and really knowing your own boat — to become brave enough to squeeze into some of the tiny spaces Patrick manages to fit Deux Poissons into.
Last time we were in Goring, we'd discovered a little second-hand/antique shop with a collection of decanters and, more importantly, a box full of glass and crystal decanter stoppers. This mattered because one of the ship's decanters on Deux Poissons has had a broken stopper for some time, and we keep meaning to find a replacement. Now seemed like the perfect opportunity.
Conveniently, the shop is directly opposite one of our favourite pubs — which is how we discovered it in the first place — so it seemed only right to repeat the process: Pub + beer + antique shopping.
We have two matching decanters, so this time we took the intact stopper from the other one with us as a guide. And we stuck to the programme. After a delicious cold beer and a good rummage through the shop, we found what we hoped was a suitable replacement.
Back at the boat, however, the taper fitted perfectly but the top was simply too small. It looked wrong. Never mind. The search would continue — AND we had developed what we thought was a fool-proof stopper-finding process.
As it was still early and we could hear live music somewhere nearby, we wandered along the towpath to investigate. The music was coming from the riverbank, so we stood on the bridge for a while listening, enjoying one of those brief breaks in the weather with the sun on our backs. Then it was back to Deux Poissons for dinner, cards and an early-ish night.
We both commented on how much earlier it was getting dark now. It was still beautifully warm, but there were little reminders everywhere that summer was beginning to slip away.
Sunday — Goring to Wallingford
The next morning started as most good mornings on the boat do: coffee and croissants.
Then we were off to Wallingford. With decanter stoppers apparently now the main focus of the entire expedition. One of the useful things about travelling is that the engine heats our water very quickly, so once we'd passed through Cleeve Lock, we took turns having a shower while underway. There's a lovely long stretch between Cleeve and Wallingford, so there was plenty of time and I love showering underway with the river running next to the window and the view out across the water and all the greenery.
Clean, dressed and onto our second cups of coffee, we settled into one of our favourite Thames travelling games: House or Hotel?. There are so many enormous riverside houses along this stretch — rambling buildings with numerous chimneys, boathouses, sweeping lawns and gardens stretching right down to the water. House or hotel? Sometimes it's surprisingly difficult to tell.
We reached Wallingford just as the rain started. Another reminder, sadly, that summer really was coming to an end. After straightening up the boat — it always seems to become mysteriously cluttered and messy while we're travelling — we set off to execute the Wallingford plan.
Which, unsurprisingly, was remarkably similar to the Goring plan: Pub. Then antique shops.
This time we decided we needed a better system. Rather than buying another stopper and hoping for the best, we'd identify every possible candidate, have the shops put them aside, then return with the actual decanter.
One pub and three shops later — and with closing time rapidly approaching, because it's astonishing how much time can disappear while rummaging through old things — I thought I'd found not only the right stopper, but something else for the boat.
A box for our keys. We have a little shelf where all the keys tend to get dumped: two separate keys for the two sliding doors, keys for the storage boxes, bike-lock keys and another set for the car. They all live together in an untidy pile.
And there it was: an old WWI cigarette box with an emblem on the lid and probably a fascinating story. From the dimensions, it looked as though it would be perfect. But we'd need the keys to check. And the decanter to check the stopper. The shop owner was happy to put both aside for us, so we headed back to the boat with plans to return in the morning, bringing with us our rather unusual shopping equipment: a pile of keys and a ship's decanter.
In the meantime, dinner on board and an evening of reading and chatting before another early night.
Monday — The Great Stopper Test
The next morning, armed with keys and decanter, we headed back into town to test our possible finds.
The stopper didn't fit. Again. This time the top part looked perfect, but the taper was just a little too wide, meaning it sat too high in the neck of the decanter and would be vulnerable to being knocked and broken.
So, reluctantly, we had to say no to that. The box, however, was perfect.
Then, just as we were about to leave, something else caught my eye. A pewter wine goblet.
Until that exact moment, I had absolutely no idea that I needed a pewter wine goblet. Then I picked it up. Apparently, I did. And unlike the decanter stopper, I didn't even need to bring a bottle of wine along to test it.
On the way back to the boat, we stopped at the supermarket for cold meats, cheese and fresh bread rolls for lunch. We relaxed aboard for another couple of hours before reluctantly saying goodbye to Wallingford and starting the journey back downriver towards Reading.
There was no rush.
We enjoyed the journey home just as much as the journey up: the beautiful houses and boathouses sliding past, the locks, the trees and the familiar bends in the Thames.
Along the way we spotted several wartime pillboxes on the riverbank and found ourselves talking about what it must have been like to sit inside one of those concrete shelters, watching and protecting this same stretch of river during the war.
And somewhere amongst all of that, it occurred to me that we now had a WWI cigarette box travelling down the Thames with us. I wondered about the person who had once owned it. Where had it been? What had it seen? Had someone once carried it during the war? And now, more than a century later, it was aboard a 1959 Dutch motor yacht, heading down the Thames to spend its next chapter holding our boat keys.
We stopped at Mapledurham Lock for lunch before the final stretch home and were back on our mooring by about 4pm. The festival was almost over.
Deux Poissons was plugged back into shore power, the water tanks could be filled, the dishwasher could once again operate without rationing... …and our decanter still didn't have a stopper.
It was another lovely few days on the Thames. And I suspect the search for that stopper has now become an adventure of its own.
