On the hottest day in July we had a visit from the Mikron Theatre Company (www.mikron.org.uk) who are celebrating 50 years of travelling by canal boat taking theatre around the British Waterways. We took our own chairs and sat comfortably beside the river in Caversham Court Gardens to see Raising Agents, their play celebrating 100 years of the Women’s Institute. Many years ago, on the Oxford Canal, we had seen their production about The Cooperative Movement performed in a pub, The Rock of Gibraltar, and once again they were thoroughly entertaining.

With such wonderful weather at home we are not motivated to even think about taking a holiday abroad. For much less than the cost of a PCR test we enjoyed a very nice meal at a new family run Vietnamese restaurant in King’s Walk, Reading – a stone’s throw from the River Kennet running through the Oracle Centre.

But the river always calls and we have only been getting out on Xenia for the occasional day trip. So, we made a plan and at the first gap in our (quite busy) Croquet Match diaries we decided to make an overnight trip – but travelling light.

I have compiled a list of Hotels and B&Bs where we might be able to moor up the boat and stay the night. Last year we mixed a 10-day trip with camping on the boat and staying in hotels but we had a lot of rain which made life less comfortable and we had to take a fair amount of gear, and provisions, aboard. So, a new approach was called for – which cuts out the camping and all the gear (apart from a small overnight bag).


At short notice, The Swan at Streatley, first come mooring, and the Beetle and Wedge at Moulsford, reserved mooring, each had a single night only vacancy on consecutive nights and so our itinerary was determined and the weather forecast stayed fine.

Our first stop was for lunch in Pangbourne where I had a very nice Rump Steak Frites at the Cross Keys sitting in their garden beside the River Pang. We found the quite large choice of restaurants and cafes in Pangbourne to be surprisingly empty for a warm sunny August day. Perhaps all the locals have gone abroad. Traffic on the River also seemed very light, with plenty of space to moor in the ever-popular Pangbourne Meadow.

From Pangbourne, with both Whitchurch and Goring Locks in our favour and no other waiting boats, it took us less than an hour to Streatley and we tied up outside the Coppa Club Restaurant just above the weir, only to be told to walk all the way round the back of the building to reach the Hotel Check-in desk which otherwise was a much shorter walk through the empty garden. But rules are rules and there might have been a wedding I was told. Once checked in we then had to move the boat from the empty restaurant pontoon and tie up under a Willow tree (a few yards away) but again had to walk all the way round the building and back through the restaurant to get back to move the boat. Both the garden and the pontoon remained empty for the duration of our stay! But the view from our room was nice.


We opted to stroll across the bridge into Goring for our evening meal rather than dine at the Coppa Club which only had an 8pm table availability.

We settled on a curry at Masoom’s Tandoori where I tried the Sea Bass accompanied by very nice fresh ‘ladies fingers’ and spinach dahl.

After a very comfortable night with teas and coffee in our room we passed up the takeaway breakfast option at the little café by Hotel reception and the ‘need to book’ Coppa Club next door and set off up river aiming to reach Wallingford in plenty of time for lunch ashore.

Again, very few boats and plenty of mooring spaces by the Bridge in Wallingford and time before lunch to explore the Friday market and pop into Waitrose for a free newspaper.

The little Italian restaurant we had intended to try out (after a recommendation from a local by the name of Machiavelli) failed to show any sign of life at the advertised 12 midday opening hour and so we ended up going past other sparsely populated possibilities to lunch at the Old Post Office, where we had good service and a light and tasty Caesar Salad in a convivial setting. When we lived behind this Post and Sorting Office there were delivery vans reversing in at all hours of the night – not something we had reckoned on when buying. If only it had been a restaurant then!

On the way back to the boat we could not resist the Mr Whippy van in the park beside the bridge. There is a well-used open-air swimming pool here and a camping site with some good facilities that I had not previously registered on – making this a comfortable boating stop.

We had it timed to get back downriver to the Beetle and Wedge for a 3pm check-in, as we had a table reservation for 6.30pm in the Boathouse, and we made it comfortably tying up on one of their two signed ‘private’ spaces before calling to check if this was our reserved spot. No separation here between Restaurant and Hotel (there are only 4 rooms) and a friendly waiter came down to the quay to welcome us, let us stay moored where we were, and tell us we could check in at the desk in the restaurant whenever we were ready. What a difference a ‘welcome’ makes.

The Olive Suite had a bath – unlike our room at the Swan which only had a shower, and we were able to soak and rest our weary feet whilst anticipating a fine dinner! We did have a bit of trouble getting the fancy coffee machine to work and had to call for help. We noticed other little personal touches in our room which had not been given at the Swan.

Dinner at the Boathouse was delicious – complemented by 2 bottles of very drinkable Sicilian Chardonnay. Although not very prone to taking photos of the meal in front of me – perhaps too keen to eat the scallops followed by Wild Mushroom & artichoke Pithivier – I did pause to snap my dessert.

Next morning we looked out over the River Terrace and sat in lovely sunshine eating our Full English Breakfast in the Boathouse – in rather splendid isolation.

The staff were taking lessons in how to operate the little electric ferry which is used to fetch customers over from the other side of the river who would otherwise be faced with a longish drive from South Stoke to cross the river at either Goring or Wallingford.

We were in no particular hurry to leave, which was just as well as one of the young waiters was able to run down the bank waving a pair of slippers which had been found by room service and hand them over to us.

No cloud in the sky made for a warm and sunny cruise down through Cleeve and Goring Locks, both with friendly lock-keepers on duty, to Pangbourne. It was the perfect day for a picnic in the Meadow and after a walk into town to the excellent Cheese Shop, excellent Artisan Baker, and the Coop for cans of cool beer, and we sat in the shade of the canopy and enjoyed our surroundings.

On a gentle cruise back to Fry’s Island we were only marginally held up by a broken-down little cruiser in Mapledurham Lock and saved the trouble of towing it out by the much bigger boat in front of us.

However, just as we were on the home stretch passing the Thameside Promenade, there was the thud of something hitting our hull and the unmistakeable feel of a foreign object around our propeller. This will have to wait to be resolved on another day!