Walk with Ray from Kidlington, 5.5 miles

Wednesday 2 December 2020

On the day we were released from the November lockdown into the dizzying freedom of Tier 2, Ray and I both took a midweek day off to meet up for a walk. We agreed to meet at Kidlington as Ray had identified this on the map as a rough halfway point between Wolverton and Kintbury (about an hour's drive for each of us). We met up at the Watts Way car park, which is nicely placed in the centre of the town and has a handy public toilet, an important consideration for our middle-aged bladders.

We set off from the car park along Lyne Road and across the railway to join the Oxford Canal, which runs roughly north-south to the west of Kidlington. We turned northwards to follow the towpath initially through nondescript industrial areas but later reaching the village of Thrupp.

Oxford Canal heading north from Kidlington

Canal Road at Thrupp

At Thrupp, the canal turns left in a 90° turn to roughly follow the path of the River Cherwell.

Ray on the lift bridge over the canal at Thrupp

Boats at Thrupp

We carried on walking north as far as the village of Shipton-on-Cherwell. At the bridge at Shipton, we turned away from the canal to follow a path across a somewhat flooded field to a footbridge over the Cherwell.

Looking back towards Shipton and Holy Cross Church

Footbridge over the Cherwell

Further on, we passed under the railway and followed the footpath leading to Hampton Gay. This had a couple of points of interest: a church that seems to be marooned in the middle of a field, and the ruins of a sixteenth-century manor house. From internet research, there was formerly a more substantial village at Hampton Gay than there is now; this has a bit about the former village.

St Giles, Hampton Gay

The ruined manor house at Hampton Gay

We followed paths and bits of road south-east to Hampton Poyle and then back into Kidlington, where we had a snack lunch in the back of Ray's VW camper van - not strictly within Tier 2 rules, but it was too cold to eat outside.

Ray crossing one of many fields

This was a grey day but a very interesting walk. Part of it followed the Oxford Green Belt Way, apparently set up by the CPRE to highlight the importance of the green belt around Oxford.

Our route in red below, showing start and end points in Kidlington at the bottom.

Canal walk; lovely plaster; EMA

Ray and I went for a canal-focused day out on Saturday 3rd, starting at the Oxford end of the Oxford Canal by Hythe Bridge Street and walking quite a way up, past a number of lift bridges, disused and otherwise (evidently these are a bit of a feature of the canal and were built to save money on brick bridges) and past a larger number of extremely scruffy boats surrounded by assorted junk. Seemingly a lot of these boats must be part of the Agenda 21 residential mooring scheme, which was evidently intended as encouraging sustainable development and encouraging those who wished to live low impact lifestyles, etc. According to this, the Agenda 21 mooring community was created in 2000 under a European Union initiative providing for official sanction of traditional communities (whatever the latter means). It looked to us as though the moorings need to come with a certain obligation on the boat owners not to then proceed to live like a tramp and to keep one’s boat in reasonable condition. We saw one elderly man with an incredible long white beard emerge from his wreck of a boat followed by three or four tough-looking cats, and cross the towpath to do whatever with a pile of stuff he’d stacked the other side of it. The fifth post here probably says it all. We walked up as far as Duke’s Cut, a route through to the Thames, and then turned back and stopped at The Plough at Wolvercote Green for a drink, before making our way back into Oxford. A round trip back along the Thames is scheduled for another time when there are a few more hours of daylight available.

Green walls with radiator

Before

Went to a free lunchtime concert on the 7th, apparently part of a long-running series of free lunchtime concerts held in the former St Michael's Church, a deconsecrated church on the OU's campus used for a variety of activities including belly-dancing. This one was a performance of seasonal Scandinavian music by Sirinu and the Swedish ensemble Laude Novella. Quite good, though they talked too much in between numbers. They played an interesting range of instruments, including the hurdy-gurdy - couldn't quite pick out which sound this was, but there was an ongoing buzzing noise throughout most of the performance which I initially assigned to a malfunctioning fluorescent strip light somewhere, but could actually have been the instrument itself, perhaps courtesy of one of the 'drone strings' referred to in the Wikipedia article.

We have, over the last two weeks (I say ‘we’, but actually Ruth has done most of the work) managed to actually get two bedrooms and the upstairs landing skimmed with a nice new coat of plaster. Ruth beavered away stripping all the wallpaper, getting a handyman in to fit the fire surround properly into bedroom 1’s chimney breast, fitting some missing skirting and removing two radiators from the bedroom walls (small flood ensued in bedroom 1, but we won’t talk about that). Bedroom 1 was looking pretty tatty after I removed the coving last year (which, I have it on good authority, it is IMPOSSIBLE to do without also removing some plaster) and given the water damage to one corner of the ceiling; stripping the wallpaper revealed the walls to have an unpleasant greenish tinge which lent the room an oppressive atmosphere for a few days. However, thanks to Mark the plasterer, the walls and ceilings are now beautifully smooth. So pleased with them I have been rubbing up against them at intervals.

After

Managed, with a bit of a rush job, to complete my EMA (end-of-module assessment) for T183, by putting together a simple six-page website loosely based on a site I have had vague intentions of doing for Ray and Darren’s business, but have never actually done. Here it is. Ended up getting a bit behind with the course and skipping the last two lessons, so my carefully-laid plans of methodically working through one lesson a week didn’t quite come off. Better get myself in gear a bit more for M255, my next course which starts in February, as it has four assignments and an EXAM.

Went for our Information Office Christmas lunch today to The Carrington Arms, in the village of Moulsoe, just outside Milton Keynes. Nice place and food – quite nouvelle but then one doesn’t need to overstuff oneself. We were joined by two colleagues currently on maternity leave, Emily, who brought her week-old baby, Baby Benson (negotiations were evidently still going on over its name), and Victoria, who had handed her two young children over to her parents for a few hours, evidently with a certain amount of gusto. Young Claire and I got a lift over in Galina’s electric car, which was interesting – not, as I’d been expecting, completely silent, but apparently some noise is added to avoid making people jump when the car approaches them. Currently there are evidently various perks for drivers of electric cars, including free road tax, free town centre parking and the like. You’d be a bit worried about it running out of charge on a long journey, but presumably there’s a mechanism to tell you when the charge is running down.

Have made various lists for Christmas, but the weekend will involve a frenzy of Getting It All Done.

Milton Keynes; Quantockian jaunt; canal mooch

Made the somewhat convoluted train journey to Milton Keynes on Friday 11th for a job interview at The Open University’s main campus at Walton Hall. So as not to risk being late I took a taxi out to the campus, but after a brief wander around afterwards photographing some of the various sculptures that adorn the grounds, I caught a bus back into town and after a c. 20-minute journey along ring roads, arrived at something billing itself as ‘thecentre:mk’ which I figured must be the town centre. Got off and wandered into a vast shopping centre – after walking for what seemed like quite a while and eventually having lunch at Burger King in desperation, I emerged out the other end, hoping I’d be near the railway station, but no, then had a 20-minute walk along vast open boulevards to get back to the station. The town is certainly laid out with plenty of open space, but at first sight isn’t exactly pedestrian-friendly.

Ruth and I had last week off work for a 4-night self-catering break in Somerset. As I had to see to a number of work-related issues first thing on Monday morning, we ended up being a little late leaving Reading for our scheduled en-route lunch with Ruth’s grandmother at 1pm (in short, we left Reading ten minutes before we were due to be sitting down for lunch with Grannie in Cheddar). Ruth made a damage-limitation phone call and we eventually arrived at Cheddar at about 3pm, but luckily were still able to get lunch at Mrs Millard’s local café the Edelweiss. Grannie had, understandably, already had her lunch there by the time we arrived but ordered a cup of coffee while we had ours.

We then drove on to our chosen holiday cottage in Crowcombe, arriving at about 6pm where we were welcomed by Bruce, one half of the owners of Town End Farm Cottages. ‘Flora’s Barn’ is one of two holiday properties adjoining Town End Farm, and very lovely it was too. Bruce and Kirsty had thoughtfully left a cream tea out for us, which we worked our way through over the next couple of days.

On Day 1 we had a bit of a wander around Crowcombe, including a visit to the Church of the Holy Ghost, apparently believed to be the only church in the country to have that dedication. It has some interesting carved bench-ends depicting a number of pagan scenes, including one of two apparently nude men spearing a dragon, and a rather cute bat. Had a look down the drive at Crowcombe Court, an 18^th century mansion which apparently these days can be hired for weddings, and then a wander into the village shop where we stocked up on a pork pie and a packet of cheese & onion crisps, and several postcards. I then dragged Ruth on quite an uphill walk up Lower Quantock Combe to look for St David’s Well, which I had seen marked on the map. After several wrong turns, and thanks largely to Ruth’s perseverance, we eventually found it, quite nicely marked with a little sign. After appropriate photo-taking, we tramped our way back down to Crowcombe for a pint and lunch in The Carew Arms, the village pub.


On Day 2 we drove out to the coast to Kilve beach, a Site of Special Scientific Interest and known for its fossils and exposed rock formations. Also, according to a book I got out of the library called The Hidden Places of Somerset, 10-foot conger eels that lurk in rock pools, though we didn't see any of those. We went for a walk from the beach past Kilve's little church and the ruins of Kilve Chantry, which is propped up all over the place and looks as though it would blow over in a strong breeze, then to the trapped-in-a-bygone-age/echoes-of-yesteryear type village of East Quantoxhead and then back along the clifftop path to the Chantry Tea Gardens for tea and cake. In the afternoon Ruth decided that she wanted to go to Minehead, so I dutifully drove her there and we had a brief wander around. To make adequate use of the parking fee we walked to the little harbour at one end of the bay, which appeared to be the most attractive part from what we could see.

On Day 3 we drove to the beach again first thing to take some more photos, as it was much sunnier than the previous day, and then up to the top of the Quantock ridge to somewhere called Dead Woman's Ditch (an iron age fortification). Had a walk around there and down into Rams Combe, where we spent a while looking for the alleged public conveniences (eventually located them) and ate cold sausages and a cheese sandwich. While driving back over the top to Crowcombe we encountered a small gang of ponies, which turned into a bigger gang once we stopped the car and Ruth got out and started petting them. One suspects they may be used to getting fed by tourists. Eventually managed to negotiate the car through the mass of ponies. In the afternoon we went to visit Dunster, where we had a particularly delicious cream tea at 'Cobblestones' cafe and visited the castle. As we were so late in the day (about 3.45pm) the nice man on the gate let us in for a discounted rate. The castle itself was closed, but we had a pleasant wander around the gardens in beautiful weather and appeared to be the only people there. Later in the evening we wandered down to The Carew Arms to try out their not very extensive dinner menu - having had a bit of a meat-heavy week I ordered the Thai fish cakes off the specials board, but was a bit surprised to discover that they came with chips - as, indeed, everything on the menu appeared to.

Drove back on Friday in relentless rain the whole way. Collected the rabbits from Steve and Sandra’s, where Sandra reassured Ruth that Lola’s dominance over Harley is normal for rabbits; apparently they’re a bit of a matriarchal bunch. Go sister.

Met up with Ray on Sunday for our postponed walk from a few weeks ago. We initially set off for the Harcourt Arboretum intending to have a gentle stroll and admire some spring bulbs, but on arrival found that it’s shut at weekends until April. Continued on up the A4074, initially rather aimlessly but Ray then came up with the idea of going to visit the Oxford Canal. The only problem was that we had come out without either his satnav or a map, so headed off northwest of Oxford with the vague idea that we might bump into the canal somewhere en route. Eventually I remembered that I could use my phone’s GPS, which isn’t flawless but certainly better than nothing, and enabled us to drive to Tackley, where we parked by the tiny railway station and walked across country to meet the canal at Pigeon Lock. We then walked along the towpath past a good number of narrowboats to Enslow Bridge, where we stopped off for a reviving drink at The Rock of Gibraltar. Then back to Tackley on a minor country road past the Satellite Earth Station northwest of Enslow. All good fun and lovely weather.