Shillingford

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26 March 2011
We have been very lax about putting our short trips on the travel blog. They go on the LJ but they can be hard to find there. So, here we are at the Kingfisher in Shillingford. The pub is small and quiet and comfortable. The food is superb. Last night we both had stifado with mixed stir fry veg and saute potatoes which was delicious. Breakfast (full English) was high quality everything and perfectly cooked to order. It was not huge but that actually suits me better.

Shillingford itself is very pretty. Yesterday we amused ourselves by wandering round part of the village where they were filming Midsomer Murders – round the corner from here. They were actually filming and we may have seen famous people we didn't recognise.

Today we walked. We walked along the Thames Path to Shillingford Bridge then took the bridle path up to Whittenham Clumps and all the new eco projects in that area. They were running a family day 'lambing weekend' but we managed to see pretty ell everything except the cafe and the visitor's centre without getting caught up in that. What we did see looked like an excellent family day out with baby lambs, lamb burgers, tractor rides, crafts, face painting etc etc. We saw the arbortoreum (willows) and Neptune woods (a battle of Trafalgar commemoration project of very young oak trees. We walked on to Clifton Hamden and had a lemonade and orange at the Barley Mow, then back along the Thames Path to Days lock.

From Day's lock it's not far back along the path to Shillingford.

We do not walk fast. We amble. And we stop a lot to look at things. We saw birds. Red kites, chaffinches, great tits, back birds, a cormorant or two, geese, swans, ducks, moorhens, coots, robins, hedge sparrows, a sparrow hawk ad a woodpecker. And rabbits.

It took us about 7 to 8 hours. Now we are back in the Kingfisher Inn. We have had baths and we have a piint of Brakspears each.

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