The Cropredy Weekend
starring Fiona and her family
9–11 October 2026.
Not every adventure needs twelve countries.
Not every road trip needs four thousand miles.
Sometimes you need a caravan, a campervan, a field in Oxfordshire, a collection of family, a slightly ridiculous amount of camping equipment and the freedom to spend a weekend doing very little of international importance.
This was one of those weekends.
And I loved it.
This was Cropredy.
Caroline and Vanilla together again.
Fiona's Swift Conqueror providing one half of the travelling village, Vanilla providing the other, and me quietly enjoying the fact that this whole setup was beginning to work exactly as I'd imagined it would.
📸 EXPLORE THE CROPREDY FLICKR ALBUM
THE TWO-VAN PLAN
There is something immensely satisfying about seeing Caroline and Vanilla together.
They do completely different jobs.
Caroline is Fiona's 2016 Swift Conqueror 480.
Proper caravan.
Big lounge.
Heating.
Bathroom.
Kitchen.
Space to actually spread out without elbowing somebody into a cupboard.
Vanilla is the opposite philosophy.
Compact.
Self-contained.
Mobile.
My little T6.1 escape pod.
Together they make a remarkably capable little base camp.
Caroline took the site's electric hookup.
Vanilla didn't need it.
Her 12-volt side could quietly get on with running itself, which was precisely the sort of real-world weekend I'd built the new Fogstar and Victron setup for.
That pleased me enormously.
There is a particular kind of campervan satisfaction involved in sitting beside a hookup bollard and not actually needing the thing.
OLD DAIRY FARM
Our base was The Old Dairy Farm in School Lane, Cropredy.
It is exactly the sort of campsite I like.
Not a giant regimented holiday complex.
A family-run farm site inside a proper village.
Caravans.
Campervans.
Tents.
Grass.
Goats.
Chickens.
And, just to keep everybody alert, the occasional train providing a free demonstration of the British railway network.
The village is walkable from the site, with pubs, cafés and the Oxford Canal nearby.
It is also only a short hop from the M40, which makes the place deceptively easy to reach.
But once everything was pitched and the doors were open, motorway Britain felt a very long way away.
THE FAROS EFFECT
The awning changed the whole setup.
Vanilla by herself is brilliant.
Vanilla with the Faros attached becomes something different.
Suddenly there's another layer between inside and outside.
Somewhere for shoes.
Somewhere to stand when the weather is being British.
Somewhere to sit without actually being inside.
And when Caroline is parked alongside as well, the whole thing starts feeling less like camping and more like we've accidentally founded a very small travelling settlement.
Population: variable.
Planning permission: best not discussed.
SATURDAY: OFF TO MILLETS
Saturday was the proper outing day.
We left Cropredy and headed south towards Frilford and Millets Farm Centre.
The round trip added roughly 68 miles to the day, which is just enough driving to feel like you've gone somewhere without turning the weekend into another endurance expedition.
Millets is much more than a modern farm attraction.
The Carter family bought the farm in 1952.
Back then it was a 300-acre dairy farm.
Pick-your-own arrived in 1975.
The farm shop followed in 1978.
Today the wider farming operation covers more than 500 acres and the site has gradually evolved into the mixture of farm shop, food, animals, play areas, garden centre and attractions that we visited.
Even its maize-maze history is slightly bonkers.
Millets says it became the first place in Britain to plant one in 1997.
Which is apparently something Britain was missing until the late nineties.
THEN I FOUND A ROYAL NAVY STORY
This is the bit that caught me.
At the bottom of Millets is Phoebe Wood.
Ten acres of woodland and wetland beside the River Ock.
Nice walk.
Trees.
Water.
Peaceful.
Then I started reading.
The woodland was planted in 2005 to commemorate the bicentenary of the Battle of Trafalgar.
And its name isn't random.
Phoebe Wood was named after HMS Phoebe.
The plaque records that it was opened on 13 May 2006 by Rear Admiral Terry Loughran CB, who had commanded HMS Phoebe from 1980 to 1981.
Now you've got my attention.
As an ex-Royal Navy stoker, I can wander quite happily around a farm attraction looking at goats, shops and trees.
But put a ship's badge in front of me and suddenly we're doing naval history.
There are some habits you don't lose.
BACK TO CROPREDY
Then it was back north.
Back to Caroline.
Back to Vanilla.
Back to our little collection of canvas, cables, chairs, batteries and domestic infrastructure temporarily deposited in an Oxfordshire field.
This is the bit of camping I enjoy almost as much as going somewhere.
Returning to your pitch.
Opening the van.
Putting something on.
Making a drink.
Realising you don't actually need to be anywhere else.
That's a very underrated luxury.
AND THEN I DISCOVERED WHAT HAPPENED JUST DOWN THE ROAD
Cropredy looks peaceful.
Very English.
Canal.
Church.
Village houses.
Fields.
Then you discover that on 29 June 1644 those fields were part of a major battle in the First English Civil War.
The Battle of Cropredy Bridge.
King Charles I's Royalist army was being pursued by Parliamentarian forces commanded by Sir William Waller.
Waller spotted what looked like an opportunity when the Royalist column became stretched out.
Parliamentarian troops crossed the River Cherwell at Cropredy Bridge and a nearby ford.
Initially it looked promising.
Then the Royalists counter-attacked.
The Parliamentarians were driven back across the river.
Historic England records that the failure to defeat the King's army contributed to mutiny and disorder amongst Parliament's forces and helped expose the need for a permanent professional army.
The following year Parliament created the New Model Army.
Which means our quiet little campsite weekend happened beside a landscape connected to a major change in British military history.
Read Historic England's Battle of Cropredy Bridge record
THEN THERE'S THE OTHER CROPREDY
Ask music fans about Cropredy and they'll probably talk about Fairport Convention.
The relationship between Fairport and the village grew during the 1970s.
In 1979 the band played what was supposed to be its farewell outdoor concert at Cropredy.
Then everyone rather spoiled the concept of a farewell by coming back.
The annual reunion became what we now know as Fairport's Cropredy Convention.
And I rather like that our October weekend happened in the same village when the giant festival infrastructure had vanished.
No huge stage.
No massive crowd.
No twenty-thousand-person invasion.
Just Cropredy being Cropredy.
Read Fairport Convention's history of Cropredy
THE OXFORD CANAL
There is another bit of history threading quietly through the village.
The Oxford Canal.
It runs for about 77.5 miles between Oxford and Coventry.
South of Cropredy it shadows the River Cherwell for more than twenty miles towards Thrupp.
Parts of the southern canal remain remarkably close to their original winding course because they escaped much of the later straightening that altered other stretches.
So even an ordinary wander near the campsite sits inside the story of Britain's early canal age.
SUNDAY MORNING
Then Sunday arrived.
And every campsite has the same strange Sunday atmosphere.
Yesterday everything was permanent.
Chairs out.
Awning up.
Doors open.
Life established.
Sunday morning?
Everything starts disappearing into bags.
The Faros comes down.
The chairs disappear.
Cables are coiled.
Things you could have sworn fitted perfectly two days earlier mysteriously become three centimetres larger.
And eventually Caroline becomes a caravan again rather than a cottage.
Vanilla becomes a vehicle again rather than my bedroom.
The weekend is folded away.
CAROLINE BACK TO STORAGE
Then came the strange final part.
Hook up.
Check everything.
Lights.
Breakaway cable.
Hitch.
Mirrors.
One last walk around.
And Caroline went back to storage.
Until next time.
WHY THIS LITTLE WEEKEND MATTERED
Cropredy wasn't European Drift.
It wasn't NC500.
It wasn't Route 66.
And that's precisely why I like it.
Those trips prove how far a vehicle can take you.
Weekends like Cropredy prove you don't always need to go far at all.
The ingredients were much simpler.
Good company.
A comfortable base.
A day out.
A bit of history.
Food.
Fresh air.
Caroline.
Vanilla.
And nowhere particularly urgent to be.
AND THAT'S THE POINT
I spend a lot of time plotting big journeys.
Europe.
Scotland.
Three-week adventures.
Hundreds of miles.
Mountain passes.
Coastlines.
All of that is brilliant.
But owning Vanilla has taught me something else.
An adventure isn't measured by mileage.
Sometimes it is measured by whether you came home thinking:
That was a bloody good weekend.
Cropredy was.
Twenty-six photographs.
Two nights.
One campervan.
One caravan.
A family weekend.
A Royal Navy connection hidden in a wood.
An English Civil War battlefield underneath a quiet Oxfordshire village.
And yet another reminder that interesting things are absolutely everywhere once you start looking properly.
That's my kind of travelling.
📸 OPEN THE COMPLETE CROPREDY PHOTO ALBUM
Cropredy, Oxfordshire
9–11 October 2026
Photography: John Nickolls / NIX
Featuring Vanilla & Caroline
