Paul and Lesley, the landlords of the Old Anchor Inn, have laid on an extra few barrels of beer in the backroom as part of a Real Beer Festival – this weekend only!

The Old Anchor Inn is one of Abingdon’s landmark buildings.

This firework display was in the field behind Long Furlong Community Centre. Its the tenth year the scouts have held such an event, and by the way scouts have been going for one hundred years.

Money raised from the event will go towards helping to restore the group’s scout hut – which got damaged in the floods.

This is Chaunterell Way on the Ladygrove Estate where a lot of the houses have caravans in the front gardens. People use the caravans during the day, and then use their upstairs at night. Building work on flood damage continues.

Good news: there were two men from the Environment Agency clearing parts of the Ock today. But what can you do against so much water with a rake, and a saw?

There will be a public meeting about the flooding on 16th November at 7 p.m at the Guildhall.

There is a Flood protection fair (with products, ideas and advice) on 15th November from 3 – 8 p.m at the Kings Centre, Osney Mead, Oxford. Free Admission. No Parking.

The Vale District Council has recently issued its flood review. The review by the Environment Agency should be published soon. They are just doing their internal reviews.

My big worry is that each council and agency are only focusing on what they can do within their powers, and not on the bigger picture – how to protect those 380 homes and affected businesses next time. We need something wider, or deeper, or extra to take the water next time. Wider, deeper, extra…

Approaching Abingdon Lock from Oxford you see these old hulks. I’m not sure they get used that much – given one has trees growing inside.

The black and white markers guide boats towards the Lock rather than the weir – always a good idea.

The locks on our patch of the Thames all seem to have a keepers cottage, and an office. The lock keeper’s most important duty is tending the weir, but we all know him as the Lock Keeper.

For more information on the Thames try the Visit Thames website. It has a piece on Roger Steere, who has lived in the Lock House since 1984. Roger and his wife, Gillian, agree that running this lock has been ‘extremely rewarding.’ A former programmer, Roger says, ‘When I was in computers, I thought ,”there must be more to life than this” so I became a lock keeper’.