Blogs from Oxfordshire, England, United Kingdom, Europe - page 3

Just under 2hrs drive before we arrived at The White Hart hotel in Dorchester-on-Thames. Our home for the next 2 nights. We knew check-in was not until 2pm so we enjoyed a light lunch in the bar area watching all the passers by who were visiting the flower festival just a few hundred yards away & where we would be heading in the afternoon. I took a stroll along the high street, so many pretty doors ( I do like doors). It was soon time to visit the Abbey, the main reason for our visit. It was 2pm and we were shown to our room, well more like a suite really on 2 levels with beamed ceilings & a lounge area, a lovely surprise that's for sure. The theme of the Flower Festival was 'Footsteps - ... read more

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 ... read more

Wednesday 20/6/18 Today was a family history day and, for my sins, we drove around a series of small hamlets and outer suburbs of Oxfordshire, Northamptonshire and Warwickshire. Fossicking around churches grand and tiny. The honey coloured limestone and slate roofs are ubiquitous with the occasional thatched roof. Evenly, Daventry, Great Boughton and Middleton Chaney were our particular destinations. The steak and stilton pie from yesterdays market was really good. I am a lover of pies but even SHE, who sneers at pies, was impressed. Thursday. We had tickets for a RSC production at Stratford upon Avon and today was the day. Stratford is less than a half hour drive north of our cottage at Stretton on Fosse. It seems to me that during the summer tourist season the theatre and opera companies only program the ... read more

For the past couple of months or more I have been suffering from a sensitive tooth, to the point that anything I drink that is hot or cold just hurts so I needed to get it sorted. I had managed to book myself into the dentist in Wallingford for an emergency appointment. Vaughan had his new glasses to pick up from specsavers in Didcot so today was an errand day. Usually we drive ourselves but given we had a now larger vehicle and parking in these towns with small streets can be a pain it was easier to take the local bus. Lucky for us the stop was right outside the marina. The ride to Wallingford was less than 10 minutes, I went to the dentist and Vaughan had to catch another bus to Didcot. I ... read more

A little over a week after getting back from Munich, I had a visitor come to London for the weekend on their way home back to Australia. Again, a bit of a surprise having Michael come visit whilst I’m over here, definitely unexpected but it was really good to have him here. I enjoyed showing him around this city that I currently call home and hope that he also enjoyed his stay here. Leading up to the weekend, Michael had expressed his interest in doing a day trip outside of London and so we decided on heading to Oxford for the day. As much as I love London, it’s also really nice to get out of the hustle and bustle of the city every now and then, and I’d been planning to go out to Oxford ... read more