After the previous night’s entertainment, we were due a peaceful night’s sleep and sure enough, we had one. We were still up early though so we got ourselves organised and worked through the next two locks to Pilgrim lock. One of the gripes that we have with the Avon is that it’s not always possible to visit every town and village along the way. One of those places is Welford on Avon. There is a pub with moorings at Binton Bridges but they don’t look to be narrowboat friendly due to their height and lack of length. Welford lock has excellent moorings but there is no access to the village so they are completely useless in that respect. From Pilgrim lock, we walked first of all to the village of Barton and then on to Bidford on Avon. Pearson’s guide tells us that it is possible to walk to Bidford from Barton lock but this isn’t correct because the there is no access for the boater from Barton lock to Barton village.

Thatched house at Barton

The Victorian postbox built into the wall and still in service.

The walk was very pleasant, even the half mile on the main road was quiet enough and soon we reached Bidford on Avon where we took the opportunity to walk around the village, visit the local church and check out potential mooring places.

St Laurence Church at Bidford on Avon.

From the garden of the Frog Inn we spotted nb Jolly Lamb on the recreation ground moorings opposite. After a quick drink, we set off again in the direction of Barton and once there, decided to call in to the local pub, the Cottage of Content – purely because it has such an unusual name. We immediately bumped into the skipper of nb Jolly Lamb, Julian so we had a drink with him before returning to our mooring.

The following morning, Sunday, we timed our move to Bidford so that we might improve our chances of getting a mooring and when we arrived, saw that the pub mooring only had a small cruiser tied on it. We squeezed Caxton in behind them and after they moved off a little later, pulled back to the last ring, freeing up the rest of the mooring for other potential visitors. Once we were secured, Sue phoned the pub and booked a table for lunch thus fulfilling our obligation to moor as a patron.

Lunch was very good and so was the service, the price was good so all in all it was very good value, especially for me since it was Sue who picked up the tab! We had another short walk later in the day but we spent most of the afternoon just sitting on the front deck relaxing.