It was actually the 50th Bromyard Folk Festival, so someone made this tapestry. Meanwhile, Earlsdon – who process everywhere – clogged off from the festival site to dance up in town. In daylight this time.

Some of the morris musicians take it easy, and get comfortable, while others stand up properly.

And Jackstraws Morris are as good as always. But if anyone wonders why the Song & Dance dancer is smiling, she knows that when she turns round she’ll see the magic words…

After a splendid if intermittently cold and wet weekend of Singing and Dancing in Worcestershire, we climbed in the trusty automobile and headed back to Song & Dance in the wilds of Derbyshire.

Leaving Song & Dance mid morning, we reached Bromyard in the early afternoon instead of the expected lunchtime as about eight miles out we kept running into “Road Closed Ahead” signs but strangely no posted diversions. Eventually running up against a “Road Closed” sign, and a traffic jam, we managed to turn round, and head off off piste in an attempt to circumnavigate the problem. Unfortunately, a 44 tonne Artic just in front of us had the same idea, but the chosen back road was very winding, very narrow, and the trees rather lower than his trailer. We eventually got out from under, and managed to find our way in. (We subsequently found out that there had been a nasty three-car pile-up on the hill outside Bromyard, blocking the road, and they hadn’t managed – when we got there – to put up diversion signs. Ho hum.

The dancer of Song & Dance  was very excited: it was the first time we’d been to Bromyard since 1993, and her dance troupe had never been formally invited, so this was forgivable.

The Friday night highlight for the Morris fraternity is a torchlight procession in the rain…

After assembling in the Rose and Lion (the only pub so named in the UK, it seems),

the Mayor, Town Crier and dignitaries head off, followed by a bunch of Morris persons.

Jackstraws sounded very subdued when walking compared with the North West Clog side Earlsdon, who sounded more like Jackboots Morris (not to mention their very large drum). SWMBO has history with Earlsdon, so your scribe must be circumspect.

The Hop Pole pub/hotel at the other end of town had closed, but as tradition demands, each side still danced one dance outside. Great Western Morris danced the Upton On Severn Stick Dance after setting fire to their sticks, while Jackstraws  – who also dance the UoSSD – decided instead to wash their hankies, and danced their signature dish, the much more delicate Fieldtown Shepherd’s Hey. So far so good…

Jackstraws weren’t dancing on the Sunday, but our boat-guest Sue was dancing with her other side Rockhoppers, and it was nice and warm and sunny again, so we tootled along to the the Ashmolean to watch.

Fran was particularly taken by the Belly Dancers, and I have vague memories of our Sue doing a demonstration at a Jackstraws Christmas Party some quite a few years ago. Perhaps alcohol was involved. Or perhaps there’ll be a new side forming…

Morris cognoscenti will spot that (a)  Rockhopper Sue isn’t dancing in this set, (b) fellow Sidmouth MC Barry Goodman is playing melodeon, and (c) there’s another member of Jackstraws double-teaming with Rockhoppers.

Also putting in an appearance were Taeppa’s Tump, a side from Maidenhead near the Captain’s winter quarters.

Moulton Morris seem to be starting their dancers young, even if their musician was too busy planning his escape to Costa Del Folk to play… (sorry, Simon!)

While Rockhoppers had their annual dinner, the Song & Dance chef continued the endless pursuit of hares on a hillside, and we went to see Leveret… a lovely concert with Andy Cutting & friends and their delightful perpetual motion music.

All in all a pretty good weekend.

The Saturday after Easter. The Saturday after we’d set sail from Cropredy. Must be Oxford Folk Weekend, and as usual, SWMBO and the rest of Jackstraws Morris had been invited to dance. But – unlike last year – the weather was warm and sunny. No snow. No biting wind. No having to dance indoors with the dinosaurs…

And thankfully, no huge backlog of boats trying to get onto the Thames, and no trying to keep mooring pins in a bank with the consistency of warm butter.

Our friend Sue – of Jackstraws and Rockhoppers – was staying over like last year, and arrived from the station just in time to go dancing. Apparently we have to have some pictures, so those of a nervous disposition should look away now…

Here they are, as good as ever, in Broad Street, just outside Balliol College.

And later on, on an interestingly down-hill pitch, they even managed to get some passers by to join in, even if the wee lad who didn’t speak English seemed a bit bemused.

And where else but Oxford would you stumble onto a pub sessions with three nyckelharpas, a viola, the smallest portable harmonium ever seen, and an Arabic looking gentlemen playing a black-skinned banjo, as well as the more usual accoutrements?

After dancing all day, the ladies were tired, so we retired – as last year – to  a Lebanese restaurant just across the canal in Jericho, for some nice Lebanese food, and some nice Lebanese wine too (courtesy of Serge Hochar – it’s a good job we didn’t know he was now “the late…” or we might have had to raise another glass or two, which would have been a bad move).

Seems that as well as the boat gathering, the local folk club had organised a session on Saturday afternoon outside the community cafe at the mill, and a boating songs/shanty session inside on Saturday evening, at which another well known folky and boater Tom Lewis would be singing and the ex canal laureate Jo Bell would be reading her poems. We’d seen Tom recently, and he was excellent, and we’d also spotted his boat moored up, so that wasn’t a surprise. Hence the plan was to try and stay another night locally, presupposing we could get moored somewhere reasonably close. We’d kindly been offered a spot breasted up against another boat, but that one really wouldn’t have been suitable for the Captain to go out in the dark.

Well, we were up at OMG o’clock, showered, breakfasted and ready to roll at 08:00 – no mean feat after a late night – but there was no sign of any CaRT people coming to move their work boat. We eventually decided to move anyway at about 09:15, and as we were casting off saw a posse of CaRT volunteers crossing the bridge. If we’d known, we could have had another hour or more in bed. Mutter, mutter.

Anyway, we found some very nice moorings about half a mile down the cut, in nice countryside, so all was well.

We dropped in on the afternoon session – that’s Charlotte chatting to the head cook rather than playing her fiddle, and Jason on her left.

Bollington is an interesting hill town, with a real community spirit, and seems to be known locally as Happy Valley. The aqueduct looks much more impressive from below than it does above, the church has a fine example of one of those octagonal spires that seem to crop up around hereabouts, there’s a decent large Co-Op, a super delicatessen, a frequent bus service to Macclesfield, and plenty of yummy mummies and daddies wheeling their progeny around. Surrounded by lovely views of the peak district, we could see why it was popular.

We were a bit puzzled by the house name and wondered what someone had done to deserve that (click on the picture if you can’t read it). And climbing back up to the canal, we took our eyes off the view just long enough to decide that the music score on Punchinello was either by a signwriter who’d just sprayed random musical typography across the stave, or it was a ditty knocked up by Karlheinz Stockhausen on an off day. (Our standards here are high: very early on in Song & Dance’s travels we passed a boat Baker Street, where the side of the boat was correctly decorated with the music for that saxophone break’. We were impressed).

We wandered back for the evening do; the place was mobbed, and the event would have been excellent apart from the fact that the air-conditioning was going full blast – like a Lightning with it’s after burners lit, making it difficult to hear well. Tom Lewis was expectedly good, and – not being poetry fans – Jo Bell was unexpectedly superb. Another late night. And back home quite a long way down a dark towpath: haven’t done much of that for a while. Winter drawers on: must remember a torch next time!

As we set off from Bosley to Bollington (that phrase has a From Galway to Gracelands ring about it, doesn’t it?), as already mentioned the first obstacle is the Bosley flight of locks. One odd thing is that – unlike most other locks – the top ends have two mitred gates like those commonly found at the the bottom, rather than the more usual single gate. And there’s no walkway on the top gates, so if you’re light crewed like Song & Dance there’s a lot more walking around the lock chamber to work the boat through. They’re also deep, so the paddles are often stiff, and the gates leak like a sieve, so even if someone had just come down leaving a lock in your favour it didn’t stay that way for long.

So – remembering to hate people who start sentences with “so” – with uninspiring weather and no time for much else, we headed off without camera in hand, and made it to the top by lunchtime rather out of breath. There’s a bit of a gap between the penultimate and ultimate lock, and we saw our friend Betelgeuse and tug stuffed in the reeds and undergrowth. Guess that’s as far as they got before running out of daylight or post work enthusiasm or lockwheeling helpers.

The top lock is something of a CaRT visitor/showcase spot. The gates are all freshly painted, and properly balanced to move easily, the paddles are all greased and easy to operate, and the gates didn’t leak. I guess most visitors don’t walk down to see how decrepit the others locks are. Cynical? Moi?

After lunch, we didn’t go a great deal further, and stopped at the visitor moorings at Gurnett Aqueduct. These look nice and suitable, but the rings are set far too far apart, and the cut there being a concrete trough, banging mooring pins in without running ropes crossing the towpath can be entertaining. Not.

A fellow boater had suggested that Sutton Hall was a good place to eat, and so it proved. An old manor house, convent and one time home of Lord Lucan, it’s now a large pub/restaurant with loads of different rooms, nooks and crannies, and excellent food. The entrance is just off the canal, and approached by quite a long winding drive between two large fields full of sheep.

After a splendid meal, we were walking back down the drive in the dark, wondering what the strange subterranean rumbling sounds that we could hear were coming from. Shining a torch into the field showed several sheep close by the fence, lying on their sides, fast asleep, and to a ewe, snoring gently. Never knew sheep snored: reckon there’s an idea for a Bach Cantata there…

We knew Charlotte, a morris dancer friend of the head gardener, had come oop North to do a boat signwriting course. She liked it so much she stayed, and was apparently living with her partner Jason on a boat on the Caldon Canal. Not far as the crow flies from the Macclesfield Canal, messages about Biggles’ progress had been despatched.

A couple of times over the last few days we’d seen passed the butty Betelgeuse and her tug (who shall apparently remain nameless until a repaint) moored breasted up,  and then passing us late in the day. Setting off late on Wednesday morning after the fog lifted from our mooring at Ramsdell, we passed them once again, heading for Congleton.

The canal here consists of long straight sections (no pansy contouring here) and the frequent bridges have an odd elliptical shape, rather than finishing vertically at ground level, like almost everywhere else. They have a narrow channel, and most have a significant ledge on the non-towpath side just at water level, almost invariably hidden by the undergrowth. This makes them an interesting challenge to pass without hitting anything too hard.

The canal takes a dog-leg route of several long straight sections around Congleton,  bypassing the town centre by more than a mile. But it goes right by the station (actually, pretty much under the station), where there is a decent pub for a lunchtime Guinness, and a convenience store for milk. So by the time we reached the much regarded moorings just below Bosley bottom lock, it was late afternoon. And warm and sunny. With a nice view. So all things considered, we decided to leave tackling the Bosley Lock flight – 12 deep locks in just over a mile, with no possibility of mooring until the top – for another day, and get the deck chairs out. It really is a nice spot, with great views over the River Dane valley, and a local hill known as The Cloud for some reason.

We’d just settled down to dinner when we saw Betelgeuse and tug passing us again, and thought “Gosh – are they really going up the Bosley Locks at this time of day with an unpowered butty? They won’t get finished before dark…”, and a minute later Charlotte stuck her head through our side hatch and said “Ah, it is you!”. Seems Betelgeuse is her and Jason’s boat/home, and they were heading for some kind of boaters meet at Bollington at the weekend. But as they were both working during the day they could only move the two boats in the evening. Turned out she actually worked at Swanley Bridge Marina, where we’d left Song & Dance to go to Sidmouth. Small world.

And with a “Can’t stop! We’ve organised a gang of lockwheelers to help, and left cars at the top of the flight… hope we’ll see you in Bollington over the weekend… there’s music and stuff…”, she was off.

Well that explains why we keep playing Betelgeuse Leapfrog, anyway!

Maesbury Marsh is on the slow and roundabout bus route from Shrewsbury to Oswestry, and as all the tickets for Shrewsbury Folk Festival had apparently gone, we decide to exercise our old-fogey bus passes and have a wander round Oswestry – only about three miles away as the old buzzard flies.

Dr. Google suggests there is a bus stop near the canal called “opposite The Navigation”, but there was no sign of it. Standing opposite the pub would mean you were out of sight until the bus had crossed the hump-backed bridge, and probably fail to see you. So we stayed on the Shrewsbury side of the bridge looking hopeful. A young lady came out of a house opposite, and asked if this was a good place, she said that she only ever caught the bus to Shrewsbury, not Oswestry, but reckoned it was as a good as anywhere.

We never found out. Two minutes before the bus was due, a gentleman pulled over in his car and asked if we’d like a lift into town. How nice.

Oswestry was a much bigger town than we remember from an earlier visit one Sunday many years ago, and proved a pleasant and interesting spot to while away a few hours drinking coffee, browsing and shopping, but the First Officer had forgotten to take a camera. Rather too many shoe shops, though…

Catching the bus back, our passes failed miserably, but the driver said “it sometimes does that”, and let us on. Perhaps it’s technically a Welsh bus service, and not valid for Engish fogeys. Anyway, he dropped us back in the pub car park, then crossed the bridge and immediately stopped again to pick someone up. So we still don’t know where the bus stop is.

Having catered to his every whim since Easter, the Captain allowed us some time off at Sidmouth. So after a few days at home catching up with washing, dentists, vets etc. we left Sir in the capable hands of our friends from Windsor, and headed off for the annual gathering of the clans. SWMBO requested some photos, so those with Morris-o-phobia should look away now.

The chief navigator works at Sidmouth Folk Week, so, as requested, some photos from the office.

Here’s Johnny McCusker, Heidi Talbot, Kris Drever and chums sound checking, then doing their thing…

… and here’s someone telling the audience where the oxygen masks, ice creams and toilets are to be found. (Whatever you do, don’t click on that one, it’s too horrific. And “thanks” – if that’s the word – to John Dowell, a former director of the festival, for the picture),

Sunday lunchtime, and it’s a tradition of some 35 years or more that SWMBO frightens the natives on the Esplanade outside the Mocha café.

Earlsdon Morris (followers may remember our previous encounter in Long Scratchington) have a hat decoration contest… here’s the judging in progress, and the winning titfer.

Here’s Earlsdon getting airborne, rather uncomfortably by the looks of it.

Here’s Berkshire Bedlam getting airborne rather more effortlessly.

And we’ve absolutely no idea who the clog dancing cowboy and pantomime horse were. Roy Rogers and Trigger, maybe.

A few weeks ago, the canal/narrowboat blogs and boards were awash with a story about someone stealing a narrowboat from a marina in the Midlands, and making off with a slow-footed getaway. The idea of making your getaway from a major crime at 3mph sounds bizarre to us. Anyway, it was some days before it was noticed that the boat was missing, and sometime later before we realised we knew the owners! The boat was part owned by the musician and one of the aerial dancers in the first Berkshire Bedlam picture. It’s a small world.

Anyway, the boat was soon located, and the only significant damage was that the criminals had painted over the boat name.

Anyway, that’s quite enough music and dance… time to get back to the water.