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.

Evesham on a Saturday morning seemed a bit down cast or down at heel compared to some of the towns we have passed through. It seemed pretty much that way on the Friday night too. We were also slightly intrigued by the restrictions where we were moored: fishing was only allowed if you were (a) handicapped or (b) under 16, and (c) had a permit from the council.

Might have had something to do with a conversation we’d had with a fisherman back on the Grand Union. On seeing him extract a largish fish from the canal, disentangle it and put it back, we gathered he’d found it increasingly difficult to catch anything, as angling is seemingly popular amongst the Eastern European/Polish immigrant community, and they apparently “fish for the pot” and don’t put anything back. Not sure I’d want to eat a fish that had been filtering grubby canal water all its life, but each to their own.

We’d certainly seen lots of Polish anglers everywhere we’d been, and have observed that they also feed the swans and ducks with industrial quantities of bread. Saw a chap at Evesham feeding a pair of swans with a whole white sliced loaf in one go. Perhaps this is the reason for the darkly muttered stories of them taking swans and Canada geese for the pot too. Who knows – bet the Daily Mail knows the truth!

Evesham Abbey is no more: the stones in the middle picture mark out its position, and if you click on the photo you can just about see Song & Dance down in the distance. The Abbey site is still interesting though, with the bell tower sitting neatly between two ancient parish churches – both still in use. One of them had some remarkably fine fan vault decorations.

The centre of Evesham has some half-timbered establishments like the NatWest bank, but one way or another we didn’t feel a great urge to linger after we’d done the shopping.

Heading on down to Pershore, one passes along the edge of the quaintly named village Wyre Piddle. On the opposite bank is an overgrown bit of land apparently called Tiddle Widdle Island, according to the Ordnance Survey. Paging Harry Secombe…

Just next to our mooring near Marlow Bridge one of the big boating outfits was advertising 45 minute round trips to Temple Lock and back. Some newly moved friends had taken an evening off from sorting stuff to come down and join our merry crew for dinner: the cook decided there was time for a quick pre-prandial cruise, so we headed off to Temple Lock before coming back to our original mooring. Even managed to use the same holes for the mooring spikes. The big boys always always look as though they’re breaking the 8kph speed limit, but our little cruise took 45 minutes. Well there you go…

Mooring near a posh town centre, pros: freshly baked croissants for breakfast; cons: the locals tend to demand their breakfast with menaces.

On the advice of the local lock-keeper regarding amenable moorings, Sunday morning saw a gentle wander in increasingly splendid weather down to the picture book village of Cookham, which was pretty but mobbed. A visit to the Stanley Spencer Gallery seemed to be compulsory, and they had some significant extra paintings from other UK collections. He might be a much lauded local and national hero, but I’m afraid that the views of Biggles and his crew were rather more mixed, though we suspect Christ preaching at Cookham Regatta would have hit the spot had he finished it.

Less impressive was the local water bailiff, who came to collect the mooring fee accompanied by husband and three unruly dogs all off the lead, one of which tried to jump in via the side hatch to say “hello” to the Captain. The Captain was not  impressed. Telling someone after the event that “Oh don’t worry, he likes cats…” only adds insult to injury. Why do people with dogs just assume that everyone else takes delight in their dogs bounding up to them and jumping/barking/slobbering at them. Stiff letter to council required.

On a day off from cat-chauffering, wandering round Balliol dining room (as you do)…

… we couldn’t help but notice a couple of pictures on the wall.

Fran & Biggles bought me a lovely Robbie Wraith drawing for my birthday a couple of years ago, and our friends Nick & Linda splashed out on a Saied Dai oil portrait about the same time, Both came from our artistic “advisor” and friend Alan Kluckow.

Think I met Steve Shirley once, back when she was setting up the F International or FI Consultancy or whatever. Certainly, my boss around then, Hilary Cropper, decamped shortly thereafter then to run FI for her (and I see went on to become probably the best paid business woman in the UK).