Two milestones today: the total mileage for this trip passed 500, and we went through our 300th lock.

There was no Internet where we moored yesterday, so this is going to be a two day update. Yesterday, we moved the boat down to be near Napton-on-the-Hill. This was just a few miles, so we were moored up for the day by mid morning. I walked up the hill to Napton post office, which had a good line in home baked bread, and locally produced water buffalo burgers. We had picked up some folding camp chairs from Tesco, and settled down on the towpath reading and watching the world go by. Paula also did some more painting of decorative elements on Pegotty. We now have red and black swirly bits which give the boat a distinctive look.

The reason we had not moved far was that we wanted to catch another of Howard’s shows. A ten minute cab ride from the canal took us to the Dallas Burston Polo Club, a vast expanse of polo fields and arenas with a strangely colonial clubhouse.

Could that be the sun setting on the British Empire?

Those of you who are familiar with the polo field in Golden Gate Park, this club has six polo fields, and an all-weather polo arena. It is owned by Dr. Dallas Burston, a pharmaceutical millionaire and polo fanatic. The play, Murder on the Terrace, was on the grass next to the club house, but Howard reports that the cast got to use the royal box as a green room. This has a secret entrance disguised as a bookcase, and comes complete with a double bed. I suspect that all polo clubs are similarly equipped with a room where the younger royals can bonk a deb or two sans paparazzi. It’s one of the rules of the game.

The play was an Agatha Christie parody, with each of the cast members playing two roles, one toff and one servant. Here’s Howard as Neville Witless with Lady Caroline.

Though other characters may have more dramatic character arcs, Howard has all the best dick jokes, and that’s what counts in a production of this sort. One reviewer described it as a murder mystery pantomime, which pretty much sums it up. It was very silly and very funny. There was audience interaction, just like a panto. I got dragged up and asked to play a vicar saying a few words over the murder victim. If I had thought fast enough it would have been a great time to do the parrot sketch, as the parrot Hercule (Hercule Parrot, geddit?) was also dead, but I missed that one. Anyway, go see it if you get the chance.

First thing this morning we were faced with nine locks. The Oxford canal is already getting busy because of the Cropredy music festival next weekend, so we had a wait for some of the locks, but at least there were fields of water buffalo to look at. Once we made it to the summit, we got a Brindley canal at its finest, following a contour relentlessly, twisting and turning through the countryside, and taking about twice as far to get where it was going than a Telford canal would. A perfect delight in other words.

The lift bridges on this canal don’t require a lot of hydraulic pumping or winding. There is just a big counterweight to pull them open.

This one is on the border between Warwickshire and Oxfordshire.

For lunch we rendezvoused with old friends Phil and Margot for lunch at a canalside pub.

Having seen Margot’s delightfully compact camper van, our Pegotty now seems extravagantly spacious.

More meandering through the countryside and then we started our descent to the Thames valley. Five locks down at the end of the day and then we grabbed the first mooring we came to and fried up some water buffalo burgers. They tasted pretty much like burgers, but having seen the herd they came from made me feel like a hunter gatherer. Yum.