Very cold frosty December day with a biting wind: ideal for
canal walking.
This is one of Doreen’s favourite canal walks – alongside Banbury’s Quay shopping centre which in turn leads out the other end onto the
Market Place and the older parts of the town, still with its many individual
shops of a more vintage character.
Round this bend on the left is a very
small jeweller’s shop, aptly named Watermans, where you can get what you can’t
in most large stores selling similar wares, repairs while you wait – or at least
if you can come back in an hour and a half, which I did.
We could have sailed to Banbury by boat, but the canal was somewhat busy.
Train was another option, but the one we wanted was full. (This really is Banbury station).
Note for Alison: the Daventry to Banbury
A361 is open again after a year’s closure for flood relief works. Of course,
true to Sod’s Law, we are on the verge of a drought. As you can see we chose a
fairly quiet day for traffic: probably we were the first to discover the road had reopened.
History bit for Norm Heberer in Augusta.
The building below on
extreme left foreground has, on its Market Place-facing side, musket ball holes
which date from the English Civil War. It was built in 1570. The muskets were fired
from the castle, which stood on the other side of the Market Place, roughly
where that row of buildings in the background stands. So shopping was no great
joy even in those days.
This was quite a happy day considering we went Christmas
shopping together: due in part I imagine because we decided to split up and meet
again a long time ahead and, despite during our journey there, one
of those frequent moments of wifely logic.
“I have forgotten my hearing aids”.
“Not much good shopping if you can’t hear in the shops.”
“Oh! I can hear in the shops without them: it’s only when
you speak I can’t hear!”
Banbury is a medieval English town, of great significance to
our national heritage.
We had a nice lunch in the Paw Paw Vietnamese
restaurant!
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