It is time for the annual match for the coits championship between Aidensfield and Holinsby. Jack Abbott is playing for the Holinsby team and at the same time having an affair with his team captain's wife Annie. When his own pregnant wife Jean finds out by accident, she drives off in their car, and Jack has to go home on the team bus. Donald Smethwick loses control of the bus, which runs off the road and down a slope. Ruby has managed to patch up the relationship between Nick and Jo, and Jo has decided it is time to introduce him to her parents. Jo's mother is not pleased to learn that Nick is a village bobby and a widower with a daughter.

PC Bellamy surprises a burglar at the Kettley's Coaches bus company, and he and PC Rowan apprehends Keith Megson, an old friend of the police. Megson disposes of the loot before they catch him, and Megson's sleazy lawyer Sellars demands his immediate release. Megson is released on bail in the custody of the well-known pillar to society Claude Jeremiah Greengrass. There is a series of break-ins at older people's homes, and Megson claims the police are trying to pin them on him. Greengrass, who is fed up with the situation, cannot supply him with an alibi and decides never to let him out of sight. Not even when Megson visits his wealthy fiancée Marilyn. Gina is alone in the pub because her uncle has been taken ill. Nick and Jo are getting married and soon it is the worst kept secret in Aidensfield. As expected her mother is not too thrilled about the idea.

Bag-snatchers are at large in Ashfordly and the police know that Ian 'Duster' Murray and Robert 'Red' Broadbent are the perpetrators, but cannot prove it. When they attack Phil Bellamy's grandmother he takes it personally and gets determined to see them behind bars at any cost. Greengrass is also in great demand. Mr. Braithwaite has died and his daughters Joan and Norma are convinced that he hid his will in his stuffed prize ram and that Greengrass knows where it is. Jo's mother has become ill and she does her best to make Jo feel bad about it, because she will not break up her engagement to Nick and Fiona Weston cannot keep up appearances when her daughter is married to a common village bobby.

A tobacco warehouse has been raided and a van used by the raiders is found burned-out on Berley Moor. The police manage to close off all the roads in the area and the perpetrators, Ned and Pete, hideout at Greengrass' house. When he finds out what they have been up to he wants them out of the house, but Ned leans on him to give them shelter. Clive Thompson is in Aidensfield to paint. He discovers that his daughter Cathy is in love with the landlady's son Stephen and he takes her home the next day, but she makes off to meet him. Jo convinces her mother to go to hospital for some test to find out what the matter is with her.