It’s been fascinating
watching the preparations for the upcoming Fairport festival this week. When we arrived on Sunday there was little
different to normal apart from the fact that there was already about two miles
of moored boats. By Tuesday evening there were toilets in all
the camping and festival fields, lighting had been set up along the lanes to
the site and marquees were going up. By
Thursday there will be over 20,000 people milling around.
We have been so fortunate
to get a mooring right in the centre of things thanks to Mike and Lesley who
have a vacant mooring as their boat is still being built.
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Moored on the offside (the left) for the next
week or so next to the house our friends are building - and, yes, that's Buddy on the towpath
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Karen leaves her car on
their drive and only has a 25-minute journey to work so that’s nice and
easy. Although coming home on Thursday
will be fun because the festival will be in full swing with people
everywhere. We’re a bit hemmed in because
of the building work going on and have to negotiate around a fence that doesn’t
quite reach to the water fortunately.
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Our route round the fence to and from the
boat
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I’ll just make a quick
mention of my back: it’s still not good so I’m spending the days alternating
between resting it and having little strolls around the village.
On Monday, I finally met
up and had a coffee with Helen on her boat Pipistrelle. We
have been arranging getting together off and on since I borrowed some root
ginger from her back in January when we were both moored in Lapworth. Although we have seen each other several times
since it has always been in passing so it was good to have a natter, mainly
about our boating lives of course. Helen
is moored opposite us and about two boats down so she also has a prime
position.
Kate and Nicky, on their boat Mr Perfick, are moored opposite Helen – theirs is a permanent mooring and
they have been living there about two years.
There is not quite enough for two boats to pass on this stretch but
whilst we were having coffee, two boats tried it. Neither driver had wanted to give way and the
boats were jammed between Helen’s and the girls’. We had to go out and help and with some
rocking of the boats they both managed to reverse out. One guy had to reverse back to a wider
section and you could tell he wasn’t happy.
I know it must be frustrating trying to get through a place full of
boats but it’s meant to be a tranquil pastime and waiting a few minutes for a
boat to come through shouldn’t be the end of the world.
As I said, I’ve been
taking little walks around the village to ease my back and found a few
interesting things. We are moored near
the church and the alleyway leading from the lane to the church is called Hell
Hole which I find rather apt!
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Hell Hole
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The River Cherwell runs
through the village on its way to Oxford to meet the Thames (or Isis as it’s
known at that point). There are marks
for various flood levels but I don’t quite understand them as they quote the
level as being 1m above a given line.
Seems odd not having the mark where the level was – I’ll have to
investigate further to make sure I’m understanding it correctly.
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Old boundary stone
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The boundary stone above
was found in 2001 buried about 5 feet under the ground. It is reputed to date from the 15th
century and can be seen on the way out of the village to the festival site.
I regret it now but I couldn’t
be bothered during history lessons at school.
Apparently, the battle of Cropredy Bridge is quite famous as one of the
first English Civil War battles in the mid-17th century. There were 18,000 men fighting in Cropredy
which seems an amazing number of people to have congregated in such an out of
the way place. Hmmm, I suppose that's a bit like the annual Fairport festival which, incidentally, is in its 40th year and not 50th as I mistyped the other day.
I’ll probably come across
some more snippets of local history over the next couple of days.
On Tuesday evening Karen
got home early as it was our wedding anniversary and after dinner we went for a
drink with Mike at The Brasenose Arms.
The fringe festival has already started so there was a live band playing
and the pub was packed out even though it was two days before the main
festival.
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