Banbury Canal Day

A year ago last Sunday, we were on the return leg of our trip to Oxford, and we arrived at Banbury on the day before their Canal Day, staying on to enjoy the event the next day. We went again this year, but by car, setting out under a sunny sky and arriving at the car park right next to the canal less than an hour later.

click logo for link

Again, it was an excellent event with a superb craft market, charity stalls and a wide variety of other traders. There was lots of live music at a couple of venues, dance down by the arts centre, a number of shop-boats selling craftwork, cheeses, and take-away food, as well as the many other various places to eat and drink. Tooley's Boat Yard was open again with a programme of talks and demonstrations, and a very popular trip boat made the journey between windings on either side of the main venue.

The weather, as last year, was perfect for the occasion, and people turned out in their thousands. I was very impressed with the local council who, regardless of the huge number of additional visitors to Banbury that day, and the opportunity to make a lot of money, didn't increase their usual weekend car park rate from the usual £1.50 per day.

It was a great occasion. I think the fact that I wasn't quite so delighted by it as I was last year can be entirely attributed to the facts that we weren't on a cruise this time, and the event wasn't new to us either. 

Banbury Canal Day

Sunday was warm and sunny, and just perfect for the Banbury Canal Day.

We had a lazy start to the day, then strolled along to the wharf after an early lunch. The event was very well attended. Last year, they had over 10,000 people, and I wouldn't be surprised if they were well in excess of that this year.

(courtesy of Banbury Guardian)

There was lots to see and do. There was a large craft market, where we bought a beautiful small wall mirror framed in stained glass, and some stained glass earrings for Grace, and we bought three Welsh cheeses from The Cheese Boat.

There were charity stalls, many and varied food stalls of course, and musical and dance entertainment at three venues. Particularly entertaining were the Alvechurch Morris, who danced an unusual form of morris dancing we'd not seen before, using stout sticks. Very funny, and not a little skilful!

All this along the canal, where people thronged and somehow failed to fall in! Boats featured to a small degree – some visiting narrowboats entering a competition for best-dressed, and children in canoes – and Tooley's Historical Boatyard put on a show of old engines, and talks on canal-related subjects, held in the dry dock, with rows of seats in the dock, and the speaker standing on the front edge. It's also used like that as a theatre!

Canal Day was an excellent occasion.

Monday morning was, in contrast, dull and drizzly. We gave Tooley's time to put things back to normal after yesterday, then drove slowly the mile from our mooring back to the wharf. John fitted the replacement part on the fuel primer pump and adjusted our stern gland, which had been leaking even worse since he first did it for us. By the time we'd had lunch and done some shopping, it was three o'clock, and we decided to stay here until tomorrow. The drizzle was back, and we had a good mooring, so it didn't seem worth moving just another couple of hours. Cropredy would be where we would have to stop then, and that didn't have quite the same attraction as where we were. So we settled in for the rest of the day, and Grace went shopping again, this time for a jacket.