Banbury

We had a super few days in Banbury and considering it’s only just over an hour's drive from Luton, I’m surprised we haven’t ever been there! Our first mission was to restock the larder and 3 trips to the new spacious Lidl, mission was accomplished.

Of course, we had to visit Banbury Cross, in the middle of a very busy roundabout. Plus, the bronze lady riding on a bronze horse. Interestingly, there was an early photo in a pub that showed the cross on a green with a dirt track around it!

Banbury Museum spans the canal, with the canal exhibits being in a glass walkway over the cut, which meant we could watch the boats go under, have a birds eye of view of the town lift bridge and Tooley’s Historic Boatyard. I was unaware of Banbury’s textile history, being the home of ‘plush’ weaving, a velvet type fabric.

John operated the lift bridge for me and locked me down.

 

 

 On a remote stretch of towpath heading toward Fenny Compton, we had company. The deer trotted along, cautiously looking over its shoulder every now & then.

John spent ages snapping this red kite being bullied by the crows. We know we’re in the south with these massive birds overhead.

We opened Jubilee Fibres at Napton last weekend. The weather was perfect, but the towpath seemed busier in the week than at the weekend. We had 3 lots of our southern friends come to visit.

  Richard with just one of his motorbikes.

After we shut shop, most of us retired to the Folly pub, where we sat in the garden and got drinks from their new ‘Potting Shed’ bar.

As usual, we’ve had some stunning sunsets.

 

 

We suffered from a bout of noisy neighbaaaars.

And these parents have been renamed ‘our big knocker’!! They really do peck the side of the boat hard & knock very loudly!!

Now I am going to grate the horseradish and chop the mint we’ve just harvested from the towpath’s hedgerow.

A quick turn around

 

We had planned to stay on the Oxford/GU sections for a couple of weeks. But we had a phone call from some friends who have moved to live close to the Oxford Canal, between Cropredy & Banbury. So we decided to wind (turn around) and head their way for a few days.

The Oxford Canal’s towpath is dreadfully eroded, narrow & uneven in most places. We passed some lads piling a long section, you can hear the thumping noise a good way away.

I’d had a water buffalo milk ice cream at the Long Itchington beer festival, which was lovely, in addition there were buffalo burgers, but we’d eaten before we went. We’d brought some of the cheese in a village store & that’s nice too. As we ascended Napton locks, we saw the buffaloes grazing in the fields.

Because the locks on the Oxford Canal are narrow, I took the boat up, as John’s brave enough to step over the bottom gates. I would have to walk around the lock to shut them.

We’ve read about the manual lift bridges on this canal, they have a balance beam, which appears similar to a lock. This bridge is fastened in the up position (thank goodness). Our pals on nb Free Spirit recently wrote on their blog, about helping someone who couldn’t get one of these bridges down.

These southern canals are far busier than our old favourite, the Leeds & Liverpool Canal. By the time we’d got to the top of Napton locks there was a queue of 6 boats to go down and within a short distance we passed another 8 or so heading for the queue!!!! 

The Oxford Canal is one of the oldest in the south and follows the contours for 11 miles at the top of Napton locks. However, as the crow flies, it’s only 4 miles. !!! It is a VERY twisty, turny route, with lots of sharp bends, usually where there’s a bridge. I took my spinning to the front, so I could peer as far ahead as I could.

As we were arriving in Cropredy our friend phoned and invited us for dinner. They picked us up for the evening. Cropredy is such a pretty little village, with local stone & thatched cottages.

We tried both the pubs and prefer The Red Lion, a good old-fashioned boozer. We had a lovely lunch there with our friends and her sister at the weekend.

 

 The other pub, the Brasenose Arms is a glorious old building, but we feel the interior décor has ripped the life out of it and there were only 3 tables for ‘drinkers’, the rest of the place regimentally set for dinners. John felt a bit uneasy in the gents and closed the door as he went in, but the way the door opened, toilet goers would be on full view of those in the corridor!!

As we were leaving the Brasenose Arms, John noticed a leaflet about an open day at the grade 1 listed parish church of St Mary the Virgin’s tower the next day. I used to ring the church bells at St Margaret’s church, Edgware, as a young teenager, 44 years ago. We just had to go, and had a super morning. I had a ago at ringing again, they said it would be like riding a bike, you never forget how to!!!! I had a good old ring on their bell number 4. They have 8 bells (St Margaret’s had 6) but they don’t have enough ringers to use all 8 at the moment. I had to decline their offer of joining their band, as we probably won’t be back here for a long while. I used to get paid 50p for ringing for a wedding in the 1970s, now they get £20!!

We went up the tower. First stop off was the clock room, and we were told about its unusual mechanism.

The bell chamber was gorgeous. We were all armed with industrial type ear protection as someone downstairs rang bell 5, so we could see it in motion, AMAZING.

Then onto my favourite place of any tower, the roof. We would always go onto the roof for our break at bell ringing practice. There’s an excellent view of the fairly new marina in Cropredy, and I gather from our guide there was a lot of objection to it being dug. But, several of the ringers, including our guide, have boats moored there.

A view down the Red Lion pub.

Much needed rainy day

We can’t recall when we last had a significant amount of rain, but today it’s poured. A perfect opportunity not to cruise and to stay indoors and do some spring-cleaning. We’ve had the shower doors off & given them a good old polish. However, being in the south now, with it’s hard water, we’ll no doubt being doing this job again before next spring!!

Here we are going through the first lock on the Stratford-on-Avon Canal, a now disused guillotine lock.

The Stratford Canal appears quite shallow, twisty & is in many cuttings full of bluebells. From our map we could see we were in an urban area, but you wouldn’t believe it, literally down in the cut.

We went under a dinky little electric lift bridge, which was very fast. I’m glad the drivers on the lane weren’t like those in Burscough & ram through the barriers as they closed, or there’d have been a big splash!! The rest of the lift bridges were manual.

The Brandwood Tunnel, is big enough for boats to pass, but this was a far better to stop and pass outside.

The Lapworth flight of 21 locks was very pretty. Several of the locks were on very sharp bends, a challenge with an oncoming boat out of the next lock. Goodness know how you’d manage a full size 72’ narrow boat around them!!

An early start was called for to go down Hatton flight of 21 hefty double locks on the Grand Union Canal. As we arrived at the first lock, another narrow boat was just going down, so they waited for us at the second one. We were down in just over 3 hours, with the help of the 6 volunteer lockkeepers who set all the locks for us.

The people we shared Hatton with were on their way to a May bank holiday beer festival at The Harvester pub in Long Itchington, well, it’d be rude to pass that gorgeous village without stopping and having a few pints.

While in Long Itchington, we strolled across a field and I picked lots of wool from a fence to spin.

 

Another evening we were on our way to the pub and were followed across the field by some very friendly locals!!

Our friends Maddie & Paul recently moved from Hertfordshire to the south midlands, just a few miles away, so she picked us up to go for dinner at their new home.

We had a full crew to go up Stockton flight of locks. Maddie, her daughter Alice & three children came. It was SO lovely to have a little crew again and dig out the life jackets.

We’re now on a section of canal that is both the Oxford & Grand Union Canals, between Wigrams & Braunston Turns. The Oxford used to own the stretch and charged large tolls to the GUCC boat to use the section.