North Oxfordshire - a secret beauty

For the last few weeks (and for a few more yet to come) I have been in Oxfordshire. To be more precise I have been in the very northernmost part of Oxfordshire at a village called Claydon. What strikes me most about this area is how chocolate-box-perfect most of the villages are, but there are no tourists. In the Cotswolds any village that is at all attractive, with mellow stone houses with traditional stone tiled roofs, is almost always on the tourist route – you can't move in Bourton-on-the-Water or Broadway for coachloads of day trippers, and less accessible places like Lower and Upper Swell and Lower and Upper Slaughter have their fair share, but here on the Oxfordshire/ Warwickshire/Northamptonshire border all is blissfully quiet. Yet, the stone here is of a deep golden colour, there are thatched cottages galore, pretty churches, village greens with duck ponds and loads of historical interest (many of the major battles of the Civil War were fought in this area), so how have they managed to keep this knowledge from the masses? I think its about time they were made to share this beauty with everyone else.......so come on people, come on down!

For many years I knew that my sister, brother-in-law and associated friends used to go to a folk festival called Cropredy. In actual fact, Cropredy is the name of the village, about five miles from here, and the festival was actually called The Fairport Cropredy Convention. Anyone who has been a regular reader of my blog will know that for the last few years I have been invited along to join this merry band of revellers as they camp for the three days of the festival, and this year was no exception. The difference this year was that I was already in situ and didn't have to be collected from the Tesco car park at Stow-on-the-Wold as in previous years. I had already been at Top Lock, Claydon for a few days and that is only a few miles up the canal from Cropredy. So it was, that at 7.30am on Thursday 8th August I hefted my rucksack on to my back and strode off down the canal towpath. I'd hoped to thumb a lift on a passing narrow boat if I offered to help at the locks on the way, but there were no boats moving at that time of day, just the tantalising smell of frying bacon wafting on the breeze! It took me about an hour and a quarter to walk to Cropredy and I was certainly ready for breakfast when I got there, so it was just as well that camp had already been sorted and breakfast preparations were just beginning! We then ambled down into the village where everyone was congregating around the two village pubs as the entertainment didn't start until 4pm on the first day on the festival field. After a couple of glasses of cider quaffed whilst sitting in the sunshine, we ambled back, ate a picnic lunch at camp and headed for the field.

Now, most people think (if they think about it, at all) that because Fairport Convention are an electric folk group from the Sixties, then it stands to reason that their festival will be all about folk music – some traditional finger-in-the-ear songs, some sea shanties and a bit of electric folk thrown in for good measure. Of course, they would be very wrong. Headlining this year on Thursday night? Alice Cooper! He may be getting on a bit (well, aren't we all?) but, what a stage show! I went down to the front, or as near as I could get, and it was awesome! His act featured his pet boa constrictor, a guillotine, a strait jacket, a Frankenstein-style electronic machine which emitted smoke, sparks and loud noises and resulted in Alice turning into one of those gigantic puppets about fifteen feet tall. There was also fake blood, fake money and necklaces all thrown into the crowd, plus all of his classic hits. It was worth it just for that experience, but the next day we had The Levellers, who were incredible – their fiddle player did the best version I've ever heard of 'The Devil Went Down to Georgia', and they were followed by 10CC to round off the day. Saturday saw the traditional Richard Digance spot and there were several excellent folk groups and duos before Fairport's three-hour evening slot where one of their surprise guests was Tom Robinson, so of course we all got to sing '2 4 6 8 Motorway' at the tops of our voices. For me it was the best Cropredy so far as not only was most of the music to my taste, but the weather was great and I slept really well due to the fact that my sister brought me a duvet instead of the sleeping bag I've struggled with the last few years - I just can't 'do' sleeping bags, I get all twisted round in them so I feel like I'm in a strait jacket.

The local paper reckoned there were 20,000 people at the festival and Cropredy is only a tiny village so it stretches their resources and their patience to the limit, but they do also benefit from the invasion. I have it on good authority (from one of the organisers) that the venue where we traditionally have a breakfast roll, before going our separate ways on the Sunday morning, made a profit of £6,500 over the three mornings that they served breakfasts, and this all goes to the church. There is another venue on the other side of the village at the school that also does breakfasts and one would assume that their profits were similar, plus of course both pubs host 'fringe' events and a lot of people go there. Once the festival-goers leave, the village quite quickly reverts to its usual tranquil beauty with only the narrow boat holidaymakers to shatter their peaceful lives!

According to the Canals and Waterways Trust guy that I was chatting to the other day, Top Lock Cottage is situated at 'the summit'. I look around me at the relatively flat countryside and wonder how I could be at the summit of anything but, apparently this is the highest point on the Oxford Canal and during dry weather in peak holiday times they have to quite frequently come up to the lock to let water through the system to feed the sections below on the way to Banbury and beyond. To the north of here is a stretch of sixteen miles with no locks and to the south there is the run of five locks of which Top Lock is the highest and then several more locks going down to Banbury. It is very amusing being situated at the top of a flight of five locks because, quite often, it is the first lock that some of the holiday makers have had to negotiate. I assume that they are shown a DVD before they are let loose on their own on the canals so there are lots of shouted commands to (a) the helmsman and (b) the lock workers. I have also noticed that it is nearly always the men steering the boats while their wives and children do the 'grunt work' of winding the paddles up and down to control the water flow and opening and closing the gates! As someone pointed out to me the other day, traditionally it was the woman who steered the boat and the men who manned the locks, so what happened?

During the four weeks that I have been here so far the resident swallows have raised their second batch of young. Phoebe says that each year less than ten swallows return and each year about forty leave. My nearest swallow 'neighbours' have nested in the shed where the garden tools and chicken food are kept, so I have been accessing it every day. At first I couldn't see anything in the nest tucked away up on a brick ledge, but over the last four weeks I have gradually seen the emergence of a couple of downy heads with bright yellow 'gapes' and then they emerged from the nest and sat on the ledge, shuffling backwards into the dark recess whenever I opened the door. Eventually, came the day when they emerged from the shed into daylight, or at least one of them emerged and I found the other one sitting on the shed floor looking a bit nonplussed as he couldn't get up high enough to make it through the tiny circular hole that Phoebe has cut in the door to allow their access and egress. After a few minutes spent moving the lawnmower, feed sacks and buckets, I eventually managed to corner the little chap and lift him back onto his ledge from where he promptly zoomed over my head and out the door. I don't know whether its the same little chap but for four consecutive days I had to rescue a youngster from the house, he flew in through the open front door and couldn't work out how to get back out again. What amazed me after my rather up-close-and-personal contact with them is how tiny swallows are – they seem to be all wing and very little body – how do they ever fly so far each year? At the moment the youngsters spend every evening practising their flying skills; dipping down into the canal for a drink before doing some high speed close formation flying over the fields whilst calling loudly to each other. They really are very special little birds and I always feel a thrill when I notice the first ones returning in the spring.

Also, along the canal, there are several mallard duck families at various stages of growth. Two of the females seem to have managed to raise seven ducklings each but another female has only three, much younger, offspring in tow, and I wonder if she lost her first brood and tried again? Before Phoebe went away we were walking, with a friend of hers, along the towpath when we noticed one family of ducks diving right down under the water and staying down for quite a few moments before bobbing back up again with what looked like pebbles in their beaks – it turned out that these were freshwater mussels and obviously a firm favourite as I saw them doing this on several different occasions. There is also a family of swans further along the canal, away from the locks. I think this is probably the same pair that lost all of their cygnets last year when they got trapped in a lock and drowned, perhaps they have learned to keep a safe distance this time. They certainly have three lovely cygnets at the moment, so hopefully they will bring them to maturity

I have another two weeks of living canal-side so will write another blog about my experiences later (hopefully with photos as I shall be back using WiFi by then).