Boog's Blog

23 June, brexit vote day

Tourist day in Oxford with Evensong

Bodleian library. Lovely square with rooms on all four sides.

Hotel, a former prison, has converted the cells to rooms. Photo is how the hallways look currently.

Walking tour using our map, historical city sites walk Wonderful and relaxing to see.

Spectacular 150 acre Christ Church meadow. Christ, Merton colleges as well as a walk to Magdalene collage.

Tea at the Grand cafe, dating to 1650 as a location for the oldest coffee house in England, no one was British and staff could not understand our American English. That and terrible lack of service. The teas and food were fine and it is a lovely place to sit.

Evensong at Christ Church cathedral. Crowded service. Started at 18:00, which is 18:05 Oxford time. Church timr is five minutes later than GMT time. Old tradition that does not change.

We have been to three evensong.
– Conques in France,catholic, no music

-Cantubury cathedral. Some singing by the choir but we did have the archbishop there. Bobby went from Bobby the unblessed to Bobby the blessed.

-Christchurch. Best one yet. Mostly singing, organ music and three readings week done.

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Wednesday 22 june. Scattered showers forecasted, heavy mizzle all morning instead.

A very wet slog through wet fields leading to soaked shoes. The Ferry Man in at Babcock Hythe let us in for coffee even though they were not yet open.

Slowly it became sunny hot and very humid. Lunch, picnic, at swinford lock.

Swinford bridge has legacy tolls and a lot of traffic. The toll is 5p, 20p for lorries. Naturally the bridge is just wide enough for two cars, just. Naturally buses and big lorries squeeze by.
At the trout inn, very historic, stopped and found Doombar. Of course we had a point of Doom.

Soldiered on to the Oxford canal. Some interesting Belgians we meet said it let out near our hotel in Oxford. As we approached a bus to central Oxford stopped, we got on. 14 miles enough.

Hotel is an old prison. Had to change out room as the first one was too much of a dungeon.

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21 June a break in the rain, brought sunny morning.

The old swan, a 16th century coaching inn being changed tonight for the rose revived,a great name.

A fellow hiker has altered us to a particular of today's walk: weeds higher or taller than us. Maybe mud as well in the interstices.

Perfect walk to the tadpole bridge and inn where we waited a bit for them to open. Coffee etc.

Morning mud report: little today so far. A few wet spots, QBs shoes soaked through.

Chimney nature reserve: very hard walking. Three plus miles of head high weeds, bugs, and pointy stuff to poke one. Apparently an unusual untouched and unspoiled type of meadow. Really tiring. See picture of a spot in a clearing.

Picnic lunch of cheese fruit and plums, riverside lock bench.

Newbridge, oldest bridge over the Thames, location of civil war battle in 1644 where Charles prevailed, naturally prior to his loss of his head. A critical battle.

Overall a bug infested walk with them doing too much chomping, us working our way through weeds, but a good 12+ miles. QB has many many bites, very tasty sheer is.

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Monday 20 June rain forecasted and arrived in quantity. All night and morning.

Evening rain last evening soaked the path. Planned on splitting the 18 mile next section by spending another night at the old swan. It was the plan but considering the waist high mud a change of plans was necessary.

Cab to the charming village of burford. Voted 6th best place to live in Europe in 2010, yes europe

http://www.cotswolds.info/places/burford.shtml

Buford Granger school 1571 see school bell in pic.

Tried local lardy cake, sticky bun variant.

Purchased Buford cheese,semi hard, and some stichelton raw milk Stilton type for the road and mud tomorrow.

Short walk to the St John lock,the first lock on the upper Thames. Manual, as are the 10 locks from here to Oxford. The stone overpass marks the entrance.

Laundry tragedy: one half of my gator pair lost into some other multiverse. Inn did the laundry and well, one piece did not return. Will miss it.

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Sunday 19 June less rain forecasted. Humid, quite.

Back on the path, through Castle Eaton onto Lechlade.

Varied fields, energy sucking fields, not one bench for 12-13 miles. Lovely walk. Less mud but more allergy. Therese would have loved this walk as did we.

St.marys 12th century parish uchurch in Castle Eaton, classic period church, seems as though they were stamped out on the 11-12th centuries.

Lechlade, entry level Cotswolds, not a positive comment by a local. Next village north is Kate Moss territory, all towns north of here are richer. Seems pretty nice here to us.

The Thames is now widening and looking like a real river. River boats and barges cab reach here, the furthest point they can go.

Tea after long walk. Tea cakes,v Victoria sponge and Irish leaves.

Old swan inn, the oldest inn in lechlade. Nice room overall.

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18 June Saturday rain forecasted. Did not happen, just like the tea.

Cricklade claims to be there first town on the Thames. Church, St Samson of Brittany, dates to Saxon times. Very Gothic now. Decent small town high street.

Afternoon tea would have been nice, not happening. Went to the hotel lounge and tried to order afternoon tea. It will be one and a half hours Sir, the kitchen is busy now with a wedding. So I day, hotel guests do not get served. On no, full service, just a bit slower.

View of the valley from the lounge where we discussed genealogy with an inebriated Scotsman, an uncle of the bride; German-Scottish couple. Significant amount of drinking.

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17 June rain forecasted; luckily only occasional drizzles before two downpours.

No hotel available in Chricklade town. We booked this place more than a week ago. Cotswolds are busy.

A lovely walk to Ashton Keyes, through fields, forest paths, Riverside walks and of course mud. Mud never above the knees. Two big downpours, one while we were in a pub.

A fine pub lunch at the white Hart, in Ashton Keyes,new owner.

Wildlife: swans, sheep, cows, several breeds,ducks, birds, no badgers. See warning signage

While walking the water park nature preserve we went through an ancient and very rare fritillary field. Many warnings not to trample.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritillaria

Road surfaces, varied. Most excellent and flat, punctuated by many mud patches.

Beer at Red Lion,local brewery,a good bitter. No room to eat there so we took a cab to the hotel.

Had to change rooms at Chricklade House, from motel level to appropriate old main building room. Situated on a golf course, very formal place, a bit formal for silicon valley style.

Standard British golfcourse fare.

Sore feet after 14.5 miles.

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16 June rain forecasted again. Brief shower again.

Made by Bob. A fine fine food place. Dinner? I ask. No Sir, we close at half past five. Certainly not at our Bob's place.

Abby from Henry I time. Lovely garden and Norman arch with stone tiled roof. Abby destroyed by Henry VIII. Wonderful old trees.

Went to the hotel spa. Looks as though they have not had a client in weeks. Sorry Sir, you have to book. But……

Dinner at a somewhat pretentious Breton restaurant, Côte. To date we have had two breakfasts and two dinners. All meals have been more to our liking and more varied than we found in Tuscany. In past because we prefer seafood to meats. Quality in Cirencester has been very good.

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15 June Wednesday

Arrived late last evening, rest day today. Rest and tourist.

Cirencester parish church of st John the Baptist, week with a visit to this extraordinary building, carved ceilings, devil over the cross. The verger gave us a private extensive tour. One Roman column,a wall from 1140, and an excellent organ playing while we were there.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_St._John_the_Baptist,_Cirencester

A walk on private property, well landscaped park open for daytime use.

After chores such as waterproofing jackets, shipping some stuff home, buying odds and ends we tried to book dinner. Failed. All booked until 9pm.

Found a decent pub and ate quite well; the bitter Wainwright was good. Not as good as Doombar but goods.

Short discussions on brexit continue. Those in favor of staying cannot articulate the argument for leaving. Have not yet found any leavers as yet.

Room view for the record.

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14 June Tuesday

This is the start of the Boogs slow amble along the lazy river Thames, ending in our near London.

Early morning train to flr, then to Gatwick and finally train to Kemble before taxi to Cirencester

Started with a multiple hours plane delay out of Florence.

Do to labor shortages a number of trains out of Gatwick were cancelled; not ours.

No taxi at Kemble station. We were extremely lucky as a booked cab gave us a lift. Taxi driver said no taxis available for two hours. Yikes. Said we needed to book ahead. Pretty hard with multiple train delays.

Views from hotel room.

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