We’re back in Cropredy, and moored up for a week now. Another aspect of the slow nature of narrowboating, is that it took about an hour and a half to turn the boat around this morning. That’s because the nearest winding hole was a mile and a lock away from us, and since there were moored boats most of the way we could not politely go faster than 2 miles an hour. A winding hole is a place in the canal wide enough to turn a seventy foot boat, and the “wind” bit is pronounced like, “Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! rage! blow!” and not like, “The long and winding road.” That’s because in the days of horse drawn boats you used the wind to help you turn the boat around.

I take back all my complaints about the marina that only opens on Fridays. I emailed the owner Ian last night, and he said he would probably be around today as they were having some work done. Sure enough, when we turned up he was standing on the dock, and we were able to get a thorough pump out of the holding tank, and a new propane cylinder. He mentioned that he was going to the Cropredy festival, and that we would probably fit in the mooring spot right next to his boat, Water Snail. We made good time back through three more locks to Cropredy, and sure enough there was a sweet Pegotty sized space right next to Water Snail, and quite close to town. I dropped Paula off there to save the space, and went up to the center of the village where there is another winding hole, so we will be pointing the right way to go to Oxford after the festival.

We are close to a bridge which gives access to a field of friendly cows…

and a view of the Cropredy Festival site.

I walked into the village. There is a village store, a church, an antique shop, and two pubs, so it’s pretty much a typical country village. Apart from the footpath to the church, which is oddly named.

Bits of the church date back to the 11th Century, though most of it is 14th through 16th Century. It’s currently undergoing repairs so the tower is covered in scaffolding and the gargoyles are vomiting polythene tubes.

Some of the money for the repairs came from the national lottery, but apparently they don’t just dole out cash to fix the church roof and put in a toilet, so the trench for the new drains that had to run through the churchyard was turned into an archeological dig.

It looks like the buried headstones they have dug up are in much better shape than the ones that have been exposed to the elements for the past few hundred years.

The church has a set of eight bells. English church bell ringing is not about playing a tune, it’s just a a mathematical exercise of ringing the set of bells in every possible order. Here’s the plan.

Six of the bells are 17th Century, but two of them, Villager and Fairport, are 21st Century, and celebrate the friendly relationship between the village of Cropredy and Fairport Convention who put on the music festival every year.

Apparently the biggest thing to hit Cropredy before Fairport Convention was the Battle of Cropredy Bridge in the Civil War. This was largely indecisive, but after failing to carve up the exposed Royalists, the Parliamentary leaders came up with the remarkable idea of having military forces commanded by professional soldiers rather than whatever toff happened to be footing the bill.

This is the Red Lion, which has to rate high in the “pretty country pub” stakes.