More from Cropredy

I've come to the conclusion that if I HAD to live in a marina, this is the one for me. It's not quite finished yet but is almost full. The people are friendly and the facilities are good. But the main reason I'd live here is the village pub with it's superb music scene. There's live music every Saturday night and most Sunday tea-times.  It's not a big pub by any means and on Saturday night it was rammed. The group were Buick 6 who played rock & blues and did a couple of my favourite Hendrix tracks. My only complaint was that they were too loud.  I really don't understand why so-called "sound engineers" seem to think that louder is better.  It was so loud that we moved into the restaurant after they'd finished serving food and that made all the difference. Not only could we hear to talk amongst ourselves but the band sounded 100% better too. For once it wasn't just me being old either, as most of the band were way older than me!

On Sunday evening we went back to watch Dave Onions, a solo acoustic multi-instrumentalist who was fantastic. He was supposed to start at 6pm so I pre-cooked the veggies and put a chicken in to roast just as we went out, thinking that he'd be finished by 8pm and we could come back to a cooked meal.

It just goes to show that I shouldn't be so organised. He didn't come on till 7pm and although we were having a great time, we had to leave at the interval or the dinner would have been ruined.

Cropredy village is lovely. There are some beautiful houses with wonderful cottage gardens and whoever named the roads had a sense of humour.

There's "Backside" and "Cup and Saucer"

but the best is a shelter on the green

We really would have liked to be here for Fairport's Cropredy Convention in August but unfortunately we've already made other plans.  I'm insisting our next year's cruising is planned with this in mind though.  We'll definitely be back.