UK trip 2018. Last days in Oxfordshire

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Friday 22/6/18

After lots of driving around Oxfordshire and surrounding counties we had a walking day today. We tried following a described walk across the fields around Stretton on Fosse. I suspect the descriptions now are meant to be followed with a walking app on your smart phone, but we only have Alison’s phone with a local sim card with data and using it with sat nav drains the battery too quickly to be useful. Public footpaths that cross over farmland are sometimes well marked and sometimes not. The less travelled paths we tried this morning had some drawbacks. For instance one crop field with the farmer spraying deterred us a little but then we came to another where the footpath markings directed us straight across a young wheat crop at which we baulked and returned via the road. That was harrowing enough as the heavy traffic on the narrow road with blackberries and spiky hawthorn hedges made walking difficult.

The afternoon walk was much more successful. We drove to Morton on the Marsh and walked on major footpaths across the fields on well-marked routes with clear stiles and only black faced sheep with young lambs to ba-ah our path. We learnt a lot about selecting our paths which we hope will stand us in good stead as we head into Shropshire, which is real walking country.

Saturday.

Alison has some forbears from Oxfordshire and was keen to try tracking them back through the public records. She has joined the local family history association and has arrange to meet a local expert at the Oxfordshire archives. She had a great day finding a highly significant land transfer document which indicated her convict triple great gandfather was a person of some means prior to his conviction and passage to Van Diemens Land.

Whist Alison was fossicking in the archives I spent the day at the Oxford Ashmolean Museum. I much prefer to visit museums by myself as I can potter around at my own pace and give such a wonderful collection the respect it deserves.

This has been our last full day in Oxfordshire. Tomorrow we head off to Hopesay in the Shropshire Hills.

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Comments

[Kate]

Paths through the fields
Combined with Alison's photos it felt a bit scary those paths ! especially the rocky ones. Henri and I did a trek at Cunningham's Gap this last trip, which to my dismay I tripped and plummeted forward. Only a couple of bruises thankfully ;P