A sunny Friday morning – and as the car needed taking home – the Captain allowed us to use it to drive the 3 miles or so to Bredon, to see what we’d missed when passing by boat a week or so ago.

Walking from our mooring by the lock back to the marina to collect the car, we discovered what had happened to our chums Cilla and Artie’s now retired/redundant collection of tea making equipment – they’ve turned it into a narrowboat. Unless they’re starting a new, small scale, floating show, like the Mikron Theatre lot, who we haven’t seen anything of this season so far.

Bredon turned out to be a very pretty, and pretty much unspoilt, village with an interesting parish church, an old pub that does food, and a National Trust Tithe Barn so famous they don’t even bother to list it in their membership book. Unfortunately the village is disturbingly close to the M5.

The church’s steeple is visible from far and wide, but the first surprise is the flooring. Fancy knotwork heating grids, and optical illusion tiling isn’t the usual parish church fare.

The totally OTT marble tomb seemed out of place, but the stained glass was lovely.

Just down from the churchyard was a fine tithe barn, for storing the local “taxes”: these days it’s seemingly mainly used as an enormous dovecot. We wonder if they harvest the significant quantities of guano flooring.

Walking back, the cook noticed this lovely – if somewhat out of character – cottage and gardens, and decided that it would be nice place to retire to…

After lunch at the pub, the cook was dropped back at the boat, and the car returned to home.

Memo to self 1: don’t try driving from Tewkesbury down the M5/M4 and returning via an Oxford bound train on a Friday afternoon at the end of half-term holidays.

Memo to self 2: don’t believe the bus timetables and signs for the Ashchurch for Tewkesbury to Tewkesbury “rail link” (sic). It’s complete figment of someone’s imagination.

Still, we hope the weather holds: it’s time to go boating again.